What Makes An Electric Eel.... Electric?

A friend recently told me a story about his professor who once had a pet named Sparky. Sparky was an electric eel, a snake-like fish that can deliver incredibly strong electric shocks. It was sleek and dark gray, about 1.5 meters (5 feet) long, with tiny black eyes. The professor, a zoologist at my friends college,kept Sparky in a tank in his lab.

One day, he felt tempted to touch the fish. “It was so beautiful, I had to pet it,” he says. He knew these eels produced intense electrical bursts when threatened. But he figured he and Sparky were friends. So he reached into the water and stroked the animal.

Big mistake.

Sparky immediately zapped him with about 500 volts of electricity. That’s roughly four times what he would get from the typical electrical outlet in a North American house. his arm hurt for the next hour. He says it was Sparky’s way of saying, “‘Don’t even think about it!

Electric eels are shockingly dangerous animals. The electric fish whose scientific name is "Electrophus Electricus" is actually more closely related to the cat fish. The electric eel is a member of the neotropical knife fish order (Gymnotiformes) and not closely related to true eels(Anguilliformes).In other words, they are not really eels.

The average electric eel can grow to a length of 2m (6ft 7in) and 20kg in weight(some grow to as much as 8m), making them the largest species of the Gymnotiformes. They are usually dark gray-brown on the back and yellow or orange on the belly. It has a very well developed sense of hearing.

The electric eel is a fascinating creature. It lives in dark, murky South American rivers, such as the Amazon. The animal can’t see very well and it hunts at night. So it detects prey by emitting weak electrical pulses that act like radar. Then the eel stuns its prey with strong electrical blasts and sucks the animal into its mouth.

The electric eel has three pairs of abdominal organs that produce electricity: the main organ, the Hunter's organ, and the Sach's organ. These organs make up four-fifths of its body, and give the electric eel the ability to generate two types of electric organ discharges: low voltage and high voltage. These organs are made of electrocytes, lined up so a current of ions can flow through them and stacked so each one adds to a potential difference.

When the eel finds its prey, the brain sends a signal through the nervous system to the electrocytes.This opens the ion channels, allowing sodium to flow through, reversing the polarity momentarily. By causing a sudden difference in electric potential, it generates an electric current in a manner similar to a battery, in which stacked plates each produce an electric potential difference.

In the electric eel, some 5,000 to 6,000 stacked electroplaques can make a shock up to 860 volts and 1 ampere of current (860 watts) for two milliseconds. Such a shock is extremely unlikely to be deadly for an adult human, due to the very short duration of the discharge. Atrial fibrillation requires that roughly 700 mA be delivered across the heart muscle for 30 ms or more, far longer than the eel can produce.Still, this level of current is reportedly enough to produce a brief and painful numbing shock likened to a stun gun discharge, which due to the voltage can be felt for some distance from the fish; this is a common risk for aquarium caretakers and biologists attempting to handle or examine electric eels.

The Sach's organ is associated with electrolocation.Inside the organ are many muscle-like cells, called electrocytes. Each cell can only produce 0.15 V, though the organ can transmit a signal of nearly 10 V overall in amplitude at around 25 Hz in frequency. These signals are emitted by the main organ; the Hunter's organ can emit signals at rates of several hundred hertz.

The shock an electric eel produces can't kill a human, it can knock down an adult horse and make a human incapacitated or unconscious which can lead to drowning in the water.

The strong electric pulse is a weapon. During an attack, a fish may zap its prey hundreds of times. In addition to electric eels, fish such as torpedo rays and African electric catfish also can release these intense blasts.

But the electric eel’s pulses are the strongest of all electric fish. It is legendary.

Electric eels mostly feed on invertebrates, some adult eels may also consume fish and small mammal such as rats.

Why Don't They Shock Themselves ?
This is possible because most of the current generated by the eel is passed into the water through the skin. The eel generates electric current for very little time. As most of the current is passed into the water, any animal around it gets shocked but the eel doesn't because it doesn't produce it long enough to shock itself.

Reproduction.
The male creates a nest of spit into which females will lay thousands of eggs. An average of 1800 baby eels will hatch;both parents stick around to protect the juveniles till their around 4-6 inches long.

Electric eels have the ability to leap from water to attack a predator or prey.They leap and pass electric voltage to the target.

They tend to curl around a fast or awkward prey in order to concentrate their shocking powers. Clever... right?
They bite down on prey, they curl around, holding the prey near their tails. This strategy increases the shock the prey receives.

Electric eels are truly scary but fascinating fishes, the next time you encounter one, make sure to flee as fast as you can.
Cheers!