Eels

[IbisNibs]

I couldn't figure out where to put this, so I'm adding to the abundant animal related threads. When I saw this article, I thought it would be fun to have a thread about everyday, very familiar creatures that are in reality very, very weird. Eels are that.
If there is a thread I missed where this would fit, stick it there, please.

Before he asked "what do women want?" Freud asked, "where do eels come from?" He dissected loads of them and never found any gonads.
Here's an article (actually it's a book review, but you hardly notice that) that explores how, after all this time, the closest answer to "where do eels come from?" (aka "the eel question") is the Sargasso Sea. The catch is that no adult eels have been found there, so . . . WTF (so to speak)? Great reading that includes giant worm balls, fishing with dad, and eels that can "move across dry land." (Sadly, potential extinction also has to get a mention, but isn't that normal these days?)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/25/where-do-eels-come-from

 

[Trevp666]

Eels!

 

[FunkyTT]

Eels up inside ya
Finding an entrance where they can
: )

 

[ramonmercado]

Definitely has potential for a horror film. I can just see teens thinking its fun to swallow them, then they mutate ...

It’s no secret that nature can be brutal and violent, but a new Queensland Museum report on the death of some snake eels reads more like the plot of a horror movie than a scientific paper.

Snake eels are a family of eel species that live most of their lives burrowed in the soft sand on the floor of the ocean.

When eaten alive by predators, they will use their hard pointed tail tip, which is for digging, to burst through the fish’s stomach in a bid to escape digestion.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-predators-in-bid-to-escape-being-eaten-alive

 

[Cochise]

Definitely has potential for a horror film. I can just see teens thinking its fun to swallow them, then they mutate ...

It’s no secret that nature can be brutal and violent, but a new Queensland Museum report on the death of some snake eels reads more like the plot of a horror movie than a scientific paper.

Snake eels are a family of eel species that live most of their lives burrowed in the soft sand on the floor of the ocean.

When eaten alive by predators, they will use their hard pointed tail tip, which is for digging, to burst through the fish’s stomach in a bid to escape digestion.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-predators-in-bid-to-escape-being-eaten-alive

Fortunately I never eat eels. Not even jellied. Childhood memories of the Cockney grandparents digging (sorry, no pun intended, Mr. Snake Eel) in to them as a supper treat.

 

[Coypu]

Eels were a part of the diet in Suffolk when i was a kid, some people had an eel skinning nail through the privy door, the head being impaled and thus enabling the skin to be pulled down. The body was then cut into large chunks, soaked in brine for an hour or so then fried in bacon fat..
Absolutely yummy. The population decline has not been helped by trendy restaurants serving fried glass eels/ elvers.

 

[Bullseye]

I used to eat any decent sized eel that I caught, the most unnerving thing about them (apart from the poisonous blood !) was that you could skin and gut them and cut the head off, leave them for an hour, poke them and they would still really wriggle !. Fun for all the family, a skinned,gutted,headless hours dead thing moving around in your sink like it's still alive, oh how they laughed.

 

[Coypu]

After gutting eels I always used to run a thumbnail along the spine to remove the dorsal aorta,only just found out it was called that..

 

[FunkyTT]

I could never eat one . Horrible things !
But the Mighty Boosh song is a fave piece of comedy.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

you could skin and gut them and cut the head off, leave them for an hour, poke them and they would still really wriggle

I've seen Chinese market footage of eel-skinning. Done in a trice with the creature impaled on nail. Thrown into the bowl with the rest of its skinless, writhing brethren.

I've eaten eels - the jellied kind - only once. I thought it resembled salmon. The colour is rather off-putting, though. :sherlock:

 

[Sharon Hill]

I love eels. Possibly my favorite fish. Unfortunately, grilled eel sushi is also lovely. I always feel guilty about it. :dinner::sorry:

 

[sdoig]

As a former coarse angler, I was quite fond of eels.

With my local club, we would have overnight eel outings, we would keep eels we caught in a keep net and release them alive after a weigh in.

Didn't stop us making them work for their freedom though! - we often had 'eel races' where we would place them perhaps 20 feet from the water and see which eel was quickest to reach the water.

Think the biggest I ever caught was around a pound or so. Probably the most fortean of fish i ever caught! - The story goes (accurate or not) that after reaching a pound or so in weight they had the urge to migrate- APART from a select few who never got the urge and would remain in freshwater - possibly reaching gargantuan sizes.

 

[Coypu]

I love eels. Possibly my favorite fish. Unfortunately, grilled eel sushi is also lovely. I always feel guilty about it. :dinner::sorry:

I have the same problem eating octopus...:tears:

 

[ramonmercado]

Strange chap.

On Sunday night in Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Park, a fellow was spotted dragging two big trash bags filled with live eels to the lake
there and dumping the animals into the water. Dominick Pabon approached the man and captured the interaction on the video, seen below. "I just want to save their lives!" yells the man in response to Pabon. At least he meant well?From Brooklyn Paper:

Pabon, a Sunset Park resident who has been fishing in the park for 13 years, says the eels looked similar to ones he's seen in seafood markets, and were likely saltwater eels, as some of them attempted to free themselves from the freshwater lake.

"They were trying to swim back out of the lake, it was crazy," he said[…]

"It is a hazard both to those animals, and the plants and wildlife that call the park home," ...

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/29/m...eels-into-lake-in-brooklyn-new-york-park.html

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's a follow-up article describing the potential problems with the Prospect Park eel dump ...

‘Big pile’ of eels dumped in NYC park; impact not yet known

The illegal release late last month became a curiosity on social media, but the dumping of exotic animals in urban parks isn’t new. In cities across the country, nonnative birds, turtles, fish and lizards have settled into, and often disturbed, local ecosystems. ...

New Yorkers free thousands of non-native animals every year, many of them abandoned pets that quickly die. But others can survive, reproduce and end up causing lasting harm.

“People like animals and they sometimes think they’re doing a good thing by letting them go,” said Jason Munshi-South, urban ecologist at Fordham University. “Most will die. Some will become a problem, and then there’s no going back.”

New York state and city officials say it’s too soon to know how the eels in Prospect Park might affect local species. But based on photos taken by bystanders, officials identified them as swamp eels native to Southeast Asia like those that have been found in at least eight states.

Once introduced — often after being purchased at local live fish markets, officials say — the eels eat almost anything including plants, insects, crustaceans, frogs, turtles and other fish. And they could prey upon or compete with the park’s native species for however long they survive, said Katrina Toal, deputy director of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation’s Wildlife Unit.

There are no plans to eradicate the eels. Since they’re nocturnal and spend most of their time burrowed in the sediment of lakes, rivers and marshes, spotting and removing them from the lake could be impossible.

“This kind of species is a little tricky. They’re well hidden,” Toal said. “We’ re not going to go out there and try to trap any of them.”

Without having witnessed the release, officials from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which is investigating the incident, could not specify the number of eels released last month. Bystanders described seeing more than 100 of them. ...

DEC officials say they will look for swamp eels during the agency’s next survey in the spring, but don’t expect them to make it through the winter. ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/nyc-eels-park-big-pile-new-york-9454b2d01a7eb4ff41d386dce358e9a5

 

[IbisNibs]

Eels as pets?

 

[GNC]

Eels as pets?

I thought they were impossible to keep as pets because they just die in captivity, and that's why they are so difficult to study (no one has ever seen them reproduce).

 

[IbisNibs]

TBH, my reaction was based on how unattractive I find them. They are as lovely as slugs. And although snails may be considered some kind of slug in a shell, I still find snails cute because of their shells, and because of their wondrous eye stalks. Tarantulas I can even understand as pets, despite my arachnophobia, since at least they are fuzzy. (Remember that kittens are fuzzy).

But yeah, you're right, eels are very difficult to keep alive in captivity. That's a real deal breaker. Or should be.

 

[ramonmercado]

When eels were currency.

Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee has his PhD in Medieval Studies from Cornell University, where he specialized in … eels? Which, as I've now learned from his eel-dedicated Twitter account, were a major cultural and financial asset in medieval England.

He even made an interactive map that shows changing property values across England in eel currency. Yes, really. There are records of that. ...

And I thought our current financial system of paper with no inherent value was strange.

Dr. Greenlee recently spoke to TIME about his eel obsession, too, which includes both personal information on the historian, and more (moray?) eel details:

Scholar Thomas Bradwardine's 14th century book of mnemonics likens eels to England, advising readers to imagine the King of England holding in "his right hand an eel [anguilla ] wriggling about greatly, which will give you 'England' [Anglia ]." Family crests boasted eels. In the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Norman conquest of England by William the Conquerer in the 11th century, the image of Anglo-Saxon King Harold shows him above a pile of eels. An Englishman in the bottom border is holding an eel the wrong way—by the tail, rather than the head—perhaps symbolizing Harold's hold on the English throne, represented by eels, slipping away. ...

https://boingboing.net/2020/10/25/medieval-english-people-used-to-pay-their-rent-in-eels.html

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Little coincidence - I'm reading this thread while listening to a record which flopped onto the doormat earlier today (on white vinyl no less):

 

[Ogdred Weary]

I thought they were impossible to keep as pets because they just die in captivity, and that's why they are so difficult to study (no one has ever seen them reproduce).

Maybe they just appear under gooseberry bushes or are delivered by storks.

 

[Xanatic*]

No, they fall out of the big Sargasso Sea in the sky.

 

[Eponastill]

I thought they were impossible to keep as pets because they just die in captivity, and that's why they are so difficult to study (no one has ever seen them reproduce).

Not sure about that? A colleague of mine had a grimy fishtank that some lived in for years and years. I think it's just that they won't breed if they're in captivity? And although I like your fortean sounding 'no-one has ever seen them reproduce', we do know how they reproduce - that's why they go up rivers. The think the mystery is more where they disappear off to when they're not swimming up rivers (hence the sargasso sea). They're very cunning you know. It's not easy living in salt water most of your life and then swimming back into the fresh water of your youth (and vice versa), it plays havoc with your 'osmoregulation' wot with how salty the sea is compared to freshwater, in comparison with levels inside you.

 

[mikfez]

In my youth I did a lot of fishing in Oulton Broad and on the Lake Lothing side of the Bridge Road lock we used to night-fish for eels.
When the lock was closed we'd often see them coming out of the salt water of Lake Lothing, wriggle along the ground, over the road and into the fresh water of Oulton Broad.

 

[GNC]

Not sure about that? A colleague of mine had a grimy fishtank that some lived in for years and years. I think it's just that they won't breed if they're in captivity? And although I like your fortean sounding 'no-one has ever seen them reproduce', we do know how they reproduce - that's why they go up rivers. The think the mystery is more where they disappear off to when they're not swimming up rivers (hence the sargasso sea). They're very cunning you know. It's not easy living in salt water most of your life and then swimming back into the fresh water of your youth (and vice versa), it plays havoc with your 'osmoregulation' wot with how salty the sea is compared to freshwater, in comparison with levels inside you.

I'll take your word for it, I'm a student of "heard something on the radio about it" on this subject! But apparently they travel across land if they don't have water to hand. OK, I do know they don't have hands. I do now recall the expert saying the eels can be kept in captivity, but won't reproduce if they are, they'll just live for as long as it takes for them to be released back into the wild (or someone gets out the vinegar and makes them a snack). They can live a very long time, too.

 

[mikfez]

I'll take your word for it, I'm a student of "heard something on the radio about it" on this subject! But apparently they travel across land if they don't have water to hand. OK, I do know they don't have hands. I do now recall the expert saying the eels can be kept in captivity, but won't reproduce if they are, they'll just live for as long as it takes for them to be released back into the wild (or someone gets out the vinegar and makes them a snack). They can live a very long time, too.

An Eel Crossing the Road

 

[stu neville]

The think the mystery is more where they disappear off to when they're not swimming up rivers (hence the sargasso sea).

The mystery of why they go all the way to the Caribbean has been solved, it seems. When they started evolving the Sargasso Sea was next to Western Europe, which was their spawning grounds. All they've done is continue returning to the same spot, but tectonics keeps it moving gradually further away.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

The mystery of why they go all the way to the Caribbean has been solved, it seems. When they started evolving the Sargasso Sea was next to Western Europe, which was their spawning grounds. All they've done is continue returning to the same spot, but tectonics keeps it moving gradually further away.

Really? Does anyone have any idea how they locate it?

 

[ramonmercado]

Really? Does anyone have any idea how they locate it?

They use aerieels.

 

[stu neville]

Really? Does anyone have any idea how they locate it?

I don't know. Must be a similar mechanism that allows salmon to find precise spots to spawn. Homing and other navigational instincts are both fascinating and largely a mystery.