The deadly electric eel cannot be pushed around. This South American freshwater fish regularly sticks its head out of the water to get some air. Together with the piranha, it is lord and master of the Amazon and Orinoco watersheds. With surges of an average of 600 volts, it kills its prey. The voltage is enough to stun even a cow or a horse. The organs that generate electricity are located in the tail. The low voltage acts as a radar for the electric eel to navigate and track its prey in dark, murky waters. This rather grumpy looking fish is solitary and intolerant in nature. In South America, the electric eel seems to be a delicacy.
Amazon
Content
- Lifestyle of the electric eel
- Almost blind
- Habitat
- Food and reproduction
- How does the electric eel produce electricity?
- Important features of the electric eel
- Other ‘electric’ fish
Lifestyle of the electric eel
The electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) is not a fast fish. Usually it lies motionless in the shady, low river bowls and in the muddy, shallow meanders of both the Amazon like the Orinoco and their tributaries, where he is lord and master, as also the piranha. With its powerful, slow-swishing tail fin, it moves majestically through the water. The electric eel is olive brown, can reach a length of more than two meters and has a tail that takes up about three-quarters of its body.
Although the electric eel is a fish, it occasionally needs to surface to get air, as the muddy, dark water in its territory is often too low in oxygen. His respiration system has been adapted to this. The practically blind electric eel has no dorsal fin, but an anal fin that forms a long fin seam at the bottom of its body and merges seamlessly into the pectoral fin. Some electric eels ?? they have a blunt head and a solid body ?? can gain as much as twenty kilos or even heavier.
Habitat
The electric eel is only found in South America, mainly in the lower basin of the Amazon basin. He also considers the Orinoco to be his territory, just like the shallow waters in Guyana. Although the electric eel is not rare in these parts, its habitat is under insidious threat from deforestation, water pollution, pesticides and illegal trade.
Food and reproduction
The electric eel regularly raises its head above the usually low-oxygen water to ‘breathe’. Incidentally, he gets about eighty percent of the required oxygen from the air ‘in normal fashion’. So he will die if for some reason he cannot reach the surface of the water. The prey of the electric eel consists mainly of fish. Only young electric eels also eat invertebrates that live on the river bottom. With his electrical sensors the electric eel senses muscle contractions in moving but also non-moving prey. After all, the muscles cause electrical potential differences in all living beings. The muscle tone (at rest) is also subject to this. It then paralyzes its prey with a few electric shocks, after which it swallows the fish in one bite.
Territory
Strangely enough, little is known about the reproduction of the electric eel. In any case, these fish leave their territory to spawn at certain times and the female returns with her offspring a while later. It is suspected that electric eels ‘sense’ their own kind by means of electric impulses and thus know whether they are dealing with the opposite sex and whether there is a willingness to mate. The surges that it releases while hunting, or when it feels threatened, can certainly be fatal to humans (cardiac arrest).
How does the electric eel produce electricity?
An adult Amazonian electric eel can generate surges of up to 650 volts at around 1 ampere (750 watts) of current. Discovered in 2019 Electrophorus voltai produces a voltage of 860 volts, the maximum voltage measured on an electric eel. However, the amperage is relatively low for all types. The electric eel generates the voltage with stacked electric cells, also called electroblasts called, which evolved from muscle tissue. Any cell ?? electroplate ?? in the long tail it produces about 0.15 volts. An adult electric eel has thousands to 10,000 of them in its tail.
Voltage potential
All muscle cells ?? and nerve cells ?? of living beings generate an electrical voltage potential during contraction and at rest (muscle tone). Millions of years ago, evolution arranged for certain fish, such as the electric eel, to transform muscle cells into electrical cells (electrocytes). So the body of the electric eel actually functions as a kind of battery or accumulator.
Important features of the electric eel
To be clear, the electric eel is not an eel or eel, and it is not related to any of them. He only has an eel-like body. The Electrophorus electricus is related to the mesal. All fish in this family use bio-electricity to survive.
- Length: 1 ?? 2.5 m.
- Weight: up to 20 kg and more. The ‘electric’ tail makes up more than half of its total body weight.
- Living area: Amazon basin (middle and lower reaches). Orinoco, rivers in Guyana.
- Food: fish, frogs, mollusks on the river bottom.
- Behaviour: solitary, bigoted.
- Age: they can probably live up to 80 years.
Other ‘electric’ fish
The electric eel (genus: Electrophorus) belongs to the mesalen family (genus: Gymnotus). The electric eel may call itself the longest fish in that family. Use all types of this family bio-electricity for hunting, communication and navigation.
Sdderray and catfish
However, there are also electric rays and electric catfish that hunt according to the same principle, but whose electric impulses are significantly less powerful than those of the electric eel. The Electrophorus electricus and discovered in 2019 Electrophorus voltai may rightly be called the most imaginative and dangerous electric fish for humans. It is also remarkable that the ‘electrical organs’ of the electric eel make up more than half of the total body weight.