I am woefully ignorant on the subject and it was brought up at work.. if I can get a down and dirty explanation of this fish magic to help me understand this absolutely amazing thing I can rest my mind for the day…
Any further explanation of how they use it for hunting and defense would also be appreciated
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An electric eel’s electricity generation process works the same way as a battery, in fact they were probably the inspiration for the design of the first battery, 200 years ago!
Basically, they have a bunch of specialised cells called “electrocytes.”
Every cell can generate a tiny amount of electricity, by moving positive ions (of stuff like calcium or sodium) outside the cell. So you have a more “positive” area outside the cell and the inside of the cell is more “negative.” This is normal for most cells.
What makes electric eels special is that they have evolved in such a way, that these cells can be stacked together, and their nervous system can control the firing of the electric charge across those stacks. Every stack of thousands of these cells is like a battery, that can generate a voltage of up to 600 volts.
As you can imagine, this is pretty advantageous for your average medium-sized fish to have, in a habitat full of predators and prey. To be able to zap your prey so it won’t struggle while you eat it, or to zap your predator so they’ll die if they try to eat you, is a rather convenient thing.
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