All living things produce electricity. In most animals and plants, the pulses of electric current are so tiny that special instruments are needed to detect them. But some fishes are able to produce enormous amounts of electricity—enough to stun or even kill.
The most powerful of these electric fishes is the electric eel. It can discharge up to 650 volts—enough to kill a person on contact. (The electric current used in houses in U.S. is usually 120 volts.)
Electric eels live in the shallow, muddy waters of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers of South America. They are not related to other kinds of eels and resemble them only in their snakelike shape. The electric eel has no dorsal or tail fins, as other fish do. It swims with the aid of a long anal fin, which runs nearly the whole length of the underside of its body. It can swim backward, forward, up and down, with equal ease. These eels are air-breathers and must come up to the water’s surface frequently, approximately every 10 minutes or so.
The electric eel is like a living storage battery. All of its normal body organs are crowded into the front fifth of its body. The remaining four-fifths is packed with more than 5,000 tiny electric generators.
The electric eel uses its electricity in several ways. When it swims, a small “battery” in its tail sends out weak electric pulses at a rate of 20 to 50 a second. They bounce off objects and come back to special pits in the eel’s head. It uses electric “echoes” in much the same way that bats and whale sharks use sound to navigate. Scientists believe the eel may use these pulses to communicate with other eels.
It is fortunate that the electric eel has this ability to navigate by electricity. As it grows older, its eyes are damaged by its own electricity, and it becomes blind. Actually, eyesight is not too useful in the dark and muddy waters in which it lives.
If an enemy threatens the electric eel, or a frog or some other possible prey is in the water nearby, the eel acts promptly. It turns on the powerful “main battery” that fills most of its body. Discharges lasting about 0.002/second are sent out in quick succession. The eel can continue discharging at a rate of up to 150 pulses/second without showing any signs of tiring. Fishes and frogs are killed by the eel’s strong electric shocks. A larger animal—even a horse that has come down to the water to drink—may be stunned and drown. But except for the gradual damage to its eyes, the eel does not seem to be affected by the electricity, with vital organs located in the front of their bodies and the rest covered by fatty tissue which acts as an insulator.
Young eels produce very little electricity. The larger they grow, the more powerful their electrical shocks become.
Excerpts from Nature’s Champions, Alvin and Virginia Silverstein, © 1980, 16, 17.
Pray that the mighty energies of the Holy Spirit, with all their quickening, recuperative, and transforming power, may fall like an electric shock on the palsy-stricken soul, causing every nerve to thrill with new life, restoring the whole man from his dead, earthly, sensual state to spiritual soundness.
God’s Amazing Grace, 312