Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
The
electric eel
isn't an eel.
It's
a fish—a knifefish,
to be exact. Such fish have long bodies, which they undulate as they
swim, and they are equipped with “elongated anal fins.”
The
electric eel can grow to a length of over six-and-a-half feet, lacks
scales, and has a specialized two-chamber swim bladder that allows
the fish to keep its balance while greatly magnifying its ability to
hear.
The
electric eel must surface every ten minutes to breathe, as it takes
almost eighty percent of its oxygen from the air.
“High
frequency–sensitive tuberous receptors distributed in patches over
its body” helps the fish to hunt others of its species.
Three
organs produce the fish's electric charge: a main organ, the Hunter's
organ, and the Sach's organ, which comprise eighty percent of its
body, allowing the electric eel to discharge both low and high
voltage charges.
Low-voltage
discharges enable the electric eel to “sense” its surroundings,
while high-voltage discharges enable it to stun, paralyze, or kill
its prey. Shocks can be produced for as long as an hour when the fish
is “agitated.”
At
the top of their food chain, electric eels have no natural predators.
Even larger animals tend to leave them alone. For those that do
attack them, electric eels use a special tactic to repel or kill them. As the
Smithsonian's national Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute's
website
explains:
Water
efficiently conducts electricity, providing a wide surface area for
the electric eel’s shock to be applied. This means that an electric
pulse delivered through the water may not be as painful for a large
predator as one delivered outside of the water. As such, an electric
eel can instead jump out of the water, sliding its body up against a
partially submerged predator to directly target its shock. The eel
then delivers its electric pulses in increasing voltages.
Electric
eels also use their ability to generate electricity to communicate.
The frequencies of the electrical pulses generated by male and female
eels differs, allowing the sexes to distinguish themselves from one
another and to signal their “sexual receptivity” during “breeding
season.”
The
astonishing knifefish lives in a variety of habitats: “fresh waters
of the Amazon and Orinoco River basins in South America, . . .
floodplains, swamps, creeks, small rivers, and coastal plains. . . .
often . . . on muddy bottoms in calm or stagnant waters.”
These
amazing creatures eat a variety of prey, including other “fish,
crustaceans, insects and small vertebrates, such as amphibians,
reptiles and mammals.” Newly hatched electric eels are also
cannibalistic, eating unhatched eggs.
The
electric eel is well-suited to its environment. Its specialized
electricity-generating organs makes it more than a match even for
larger predators that make the mistake—sometimes the fatal
mistake—of attacking them, and other specialized organs assist them
in hearing and otherwise sensing their environment and detecting
prey.
The
offensive and defensive abilities, heightened senses of hearing and balance,
communication abilities, and omnivorous feeding habits of the so-called
electric eel places it at the top of its food chain, making it an
apex predator.
Such
abilities can dramatically increase the threat of a horror story's
monster, especially if the monster uses its abilities in other ways
and against human prey and, perhaps, possesses additional powers that
this extraordinary knifefish itself lacks.
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