According to a new study from Vanderbilt University, electric eels can use their powers for more than just stunning prey. Photo: Alamy Hemis / NatGeo
Electric eels are the type of utterly disturbing creatures that’ll haunt your dreams. They can produce a shock of 600 volts, which is enough to take down a horse. They can grow up to eight-feet-long. And in general they’re just creepy looking critters. Not to be confused with ocean eels (which don’t have the power of generating shocks), electric eels are native to the freshwater rivers of South America. And because they like to burrow deep in murky riverbeds, they’re extremely difficult to study in the wild. But a new report just found that they can use their electro superpower for a previously unknown purpose.
Kenneth C. Catania, a neurobiologist at Vanderbilt University, released a study that reveals electric eels also use their ability to track prey. The newly discovered skill is similar to a bat’s echolocation or a whale’s sonar. But unlike those other sensory creatures, the electric eel’s superpower also doubles as a weapon, making it a truly effective hunting machine. “The eel can use its electric attack simultaneously as a weapon and a sensory system,” Catania writes. “It’s sort of a science-fiction-like ability.”
As if eels weren’t creepy enough, they’ve just been elevated to a “science-fiction-like” level of terror. And this finding is somewhat revolutionary. Catania is one of the leading eel researchers out there and, prior to this discovery, he believed them to be primitive hunters. But now, after his extensive research, he finds them to be “far more sophisticated than previously described.” GREAT. Just add the electric eel to the already gigantic list of things that can kill you in the Amazon.
