The adult electric eel can produce a five hundred volt shock, which is enough to stun a horse.
It looks like an eel, and moves like an eel, but it’s not….nor is it a duck. The electric eel, or electrophorus electricus are a species that eat fish, which regular eels don’t do. The name for fish-eating species is picivorous.
The long, snakelike body, measuring up to nine feet, is brown/olive green in color, and has fins on its back end, to help the eel swim. When they catch up to prey, the eel stuns it with an electric shock, and then swallows it whole, because they have no teeth.
While it may seem odd for a denizen of the underwater world to create electricity, almost all living creatures do. Chemical reactions from cells produce minute amounts, which is how tests like electrocardiograms work to trace the action of the human heart. But electric eels produce much more than that. A jolt of up to 650 volts can actually kill a man.
The electrical impulses emitted by these eels, is used primarily as a navigation tool, and for seeking prey. However, when touched accidentally, they can send off a charge that will stun or kill other fish, depending on their size, and the eel’s reaction.
Electricity is produced in the eel, through a series of around 6,000 electroplates that line seven-eighths of its body, the brain and organs being concentrated directly behind the head. Like a battery, the tail of an eel is a positive contact, and the head, a negative. When both are touched to an enemy, the electricity flows from the eel’s head and into the prey. At rest, and untouched, the eel has no charge, at all.
As an air-breather, the electric eel must surface at least every 15 minutes. It is only able to stay underneath the muddy waters of its natural South American habitat, thanks to an extra air-intake organ in its mouth.
