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Electric Eels

Shocking news: world's most powerful electric eel found in Amazon

Electrophorus voltai can deliver a jolt of 860 volts, much more than existing record of 650 volts

“In spite of all human impact on the Amazon rainforest in the last 50 years, we can still discover giant fishes like the two new species of electric eels,” said lead researcher C David de Santana, a zoologist working with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

The electric eel, which is a kind of fish rather than an eel, inspired the design of the first electric battery.

analysis, including of DNA from 107 samples they collected, upended centuries of assumptions and revealed three species: the previously known Electrophorus electricus, along with Electrophorus voltai and Electrophorus varii.

And their research also uncovered another stunning result: E. voltai is capable of delivering a jolt of 860 volts – much more than the 650 volts previously recorded from electric eels – “making it the strongest bioelectricity generator known”.

The researchers found each of the three species had a clearly defined habitat, with E. electricus living in the Guiana Shield region, E. voltai in the Brazilian Shield, a highland further south, and E. varii inhabiting slow-flowing lowland Amazon basin waters.

And they suggest that the particularly strong electric shock that E. voltai can produce could be an adaptation to life in highland waters, where conductivity is reduced.

FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ds-most-powerful-electric-eel-found-in-amazon
 
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Here's a new spin on holidaze museum exhibits ... An aquarium has wired its electric eel's enclosure so that the eel's electrical discharges trigger and illuminate nearby Xmas lights.
Shocked? Electric eel powers aquarium’s Christmas lights

Visitors to the Tennessee Aquarium may be shocked to learn that an electric eel named Miguel Wattson is lighting up a Christmas tree.

A special system connected to Miguel’s tank enables his shocks to power strands of lights on a nearby tree, according to a news release.

Miguel releases low-voltage blips of electricity when he is trying to find food, aquarist Kimberly Hurt said. That translates to a rapid, dim blinking of the Christmas lights. When he is eating or excited he emits higher voltage shocks which cause bigger flashes.

Wattson has his own Twitter account where he shares tweets generated by his sparky self, courtesy of coding by Tennessee Tech University’s iCube center. ...

In between Miguel’s tweets boasting statements like “SHAZAM!!!!” and “ka-BLAMEROO!!!!!,” a video posted to the account shows Miguel shaking in his tank as lights on the nearby tree sputter on and off. ...
SOURCE: https://apnews.com/c7b9a629f32d0cbd0598d9c9755ef58b
 
This story seemed cruel to me at first. I thought the eels produced electric flashes when they were frightened, so the creature must've been uncomfortable, but it seems they do it all the time and it's not an alarm reaction. So there's me educated!
 
It reads to me as if the eel is triggering a sensor which dims or flashes the lights. The heading implies, I think incorrectly, that the eel powers the lights.
 
Electric eels have now been discovered to hunt in packs. Their collective charge is much greater when activated en masse - enough to 'blast' prey fish out of the water.
Electric eels can supercharge their attacks by working together

Their shock can be 10 times more powerful as a group.

Stunning new video footage captures electric eels in the Amazon hunting in groups of more than 100. Deadly packs then splinter off to collectively deliver a supercharged jolt that blasts fish out of the water, a new study finds.

This is the first time such group hunting has been seen in Volta's electric eels (Electrophorus voltai), a type of knifefish already known for individually producing the strongest electric shock of any animal.

The video footage, which was described Jan. 14 in the journal Ecology and Evolution, was captured at a small lake on the banks of the Iriri River in Brazil. "It's really amazing to find a behavior like that with eels that are 2.4, 2.5 meters [around 8 feet] long," David de Santana, a zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and co-author of the new study, told Live Science. ...

The newly documented group hunting method, involves up to 100 electric eels encircling shoals of small tetra fish to form a "prey ball," then herding them toward shallower waters. Then, some eels (between two and 10 individuals) splinter off from the main group and move closer to the ball to deliver a supercharged jolt of electricity.

The synchronized shock is so powerful that some of the shoaling fish are blasted out of the water and land back on the surface stunned. They then float motionless, becoming an easy catch for the predatory eels. ...

FULL STORY (With Video):
https://www.livescience.com/electric-eels-hunt-in-groups.html
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract of the published report on group hunting behavior. The full article is available at the link below.

Social predation in electric eels
Douglas A. Bastos, Jansen Zuanon, Lúcia Rapp Py‐Daniel & Carlos David de Santana
Ecology and Evolution
First published: 14 January 2021
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7121

Abstract
Social predation—when groups of predators coordinate actions to find and capture prey—is a common tactic among mammals but comparatively rare in fishes. We report the unexpected social predation by electric eels, an otherwise solitary predator in the Amazon rainforest. Observations made in different years and recorded on video show electric eels herding, encircling shoals of small nektonic fishes, and launching joint predatory high‐voltage strikes on the prey ball. These findings challenge the hypothesis that electric eels may have a single foraging strategy and extend our knowledge on social predation to an organism that employs high‐voltage discharge for hunting. Thereby offering a novel perspective for studies on the evolutionary interplay between predatory and escape tactics.

FULL ARTICLE ACCESSIBLE AT:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.7121
 
Saw the question somewhere 'what did they call electric eels before electricity ?' (was it on this forum ?) and have that thought tumbling over and over in my brain. Yeah yeah I know electricity was discovered, not invented - doesn't help.
 
Saw the question somewhere 'what did they call electric eels before electricity ?' (was it on this forum ?) and have that thought tumbling over and over in my brain. Yeah yeah I know electricity was discovered, not invented - doesn't help.
"Indigenous people in Venezuela called it arimna, or “something that deprives you of motion.” Early European naturalists referred to it as the “numb-eel.” And for 250 years, since it was first given a Latin name, Western scientists have known it as Electrophorus electricus, the electric eel, the sole member of its genus ..."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/electric-eel-three-species-what-a-shock/597709/
 
"Indigenous people in Venezuela called it arimna, or “something that deprives you of motion.” Early European naturalists referred to it as the “numb-eel.” And for 250 years, since it was first given a Latin name, Western scientists have known it as Electrophorus electricus, the electric eel, the sole member of its genus ..."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/electric-eel-three-species-what-a-shock/597709/
We've got a ray that gives a bit of a shock when touched or handled, down here in Australia - It's a bit of a bastard because it's sluggish, likes to bury itself in mud or sand, and is easily trod on.

I discovered the fact that it gives a shock when I was spearfishing and nudged it with a hawaiian sling.

I didn't expect the result - it came as a bit of a shock really...

For some reason it's called the coffin fish (Hypnos monopterygius)...I have no idea why - it doesn't look anything like a coffin.
 
Saw the question somewhere 'what did they call electric eels before electricity ?' ...

The word 'electric' pre-dates the taxonomic classification of the electric eel, which first occurred in 1766:
The species is so unusual that it has been reclassified several times. When originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1766, he used the name Gymnotus electricus, placing it in the same genus as Gymnotus carapo (banded knifefish) which he had described several years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrophorus_electricus

As early as the 1600s the term 'electric' was used to describe the effect of static electricity.

electric (adj.)

1640s, first used in English by physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), apparently coined as Modern Latin electricus (literally "resembling amber") by English physicist William Gilbert (1540-1603) in treatise "De Magnete" (1600), from Latin electrum"amber," from Greek ēlektron "amber" (Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus) ...

Originally the word described substances which, like amber, attract other substances when rubbed. Meaning "charged with electricity" is from 1670s ...
https://www.etymonline.com/word/electric
 
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