If I can’t raise Pikachu, can I raise an electric eel?

The animation and games of "Pokémon" are the common childhood memories of our generation. Who doesn't want to have a golden electric mouse? Of course, both the animation and the game are our imagination, so are there any animals in reality that can attack their opponents by generating electricity? The answer is: Of course there are.

Pikachu can also discharge electricity | "Pokémon"

The Amazon River Monster

South America is the last continent explored by modern human civilization. It is often portrayed as a mysterious and wild area. The tropical rainforest in the Amazon River Basin is the most representative of South America. In many legends, there are poisonous and even man-eating plants, mysterious and strange animals, and cannibals living in the depths of the rainforest who use blowguns and spears as weapons...

There are also dangerous "water monsters" in the river | Alex Zakletsky / Wikimedia Commons

One of the legends is this: In the rivers deep in the Amazon rainforest, there live huge "water monsters". Their bodies are like a stick, several meters long, with very small eyes, and they shuttle through the turbid water. They wait for creatures on land to cross the river. When you go into the water, these water monsters will release magic to paralyze you. After you fall into the water and drown, the water monsters will come out from their hidden nests and devour your flesh and blood... In order to avoid being killed, when the locals have to cross the river, they will drive horses, cattle, sheep and other livestock into the water first, waiting for the livestock to be killed by magic, and the water monsters will eat the meat, and they will have no time to take care of them before crossing the river.

Horses attacked by a water monster | Wikimedia Commons

This story has appeared in countless street literature works and was one of my lingering nightmares when I was a child. The prototype of the water monster is the protagonist of our species calendar today: the electric eel.

The electric eel can reach a length of 2 meters. Most of its body is gray, with a lighter yellow or orange color on the belly. It is cylindrical in shape, a very standard "eel-shaped" eel. Although it is called an eel, it belongs to the order Anguillariae. It is not very related to the Japanese eel that we eat eel rice with, but is more closely related to catfish.

The electric eel is not an eel, but a relative of catfish | Thesupermat / Wikimedia Commons

Electric eels like to live in shallow ponds or river banks. Such water environments often contain a lot of impurities such as mud and sand, which makes the water very turbid and visibility poor. Therefore, the eyes of electric eels are "better than nothing" and become very small. However, there are some sunken "small holes" on both sides of the mouth below its eyes. These small holes can sense changes in water flow and subtle vibrations around, which to some extent make up for the lack of vision.

The electric eel has many pits on its side. | Stan Shebs / Wikimedia Commons

Huge battery

Although humans have recorded electric eels for more than 200 years, we still know very little about them. For a long time, we only knew that "this fish uses electricity to hunt and defend itself", and in recent years, research on electric eels has allowed us to slowly uncover the mystery of this species.

A large part of the back of the electric eel's body is filled with discharge bodies composed of a specialized muscle tissue (mainly subaxial muscles). Each discharge body can generate a voltage of about 0.15 volts, and thousands of discharge bodies combined are equivalent to a huge battery, allowing the electric eel to release 500-800 volts of "high voltage electricity".

Schematic diagram of the electric eel's muscular structure. | Daniel Zukowski / Yale University

Electric eels can not only generate electricity, but also develop several exclusive "secrets" to use electricity as a weapon. For example, when dealing with underwater opponents, electric eels can bend their bodies and gather the electricity to a point to shoot out, doubling the power. This reminds me of Misaka Mikoto's "A Certain Scientific Railgun", isn't it exactly the same? Water is a good conductor of electricity, and the loss of current conduction in water will be very large, so electric eels will also jump out of the water and stick their bodies to the opponent to continuously discharge electricity, which is simply the zero-distance particle cannon attack of Gundam Gp03D!

Are electric eels good pets?

In recent years, biologists have discovered that there are not one type of electric eel, but three types! By analyzing the morphology, genes, and distribution characteristics of hundreds of samples, biologists have come to the above conclusions. They are the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus), the Voltaic electric eel (E. voltai), and the Variscan electric eel (E. vari). Among them, the Voltaic electric eel has the strongest power generation capacity, and the voltage generated can reach 860 volts, while the highest voltage recorded before is only 650 volts. The name Volta is not an abbreviation of "Volta is high and especially powerful", but in memory of Alessandro Volta, a teacher who studied electric eels and later invented the voltaic battery. Naming the newly discovered electric eel after this gentleman is also a kind of "repaying the debt of gratitude", right? The Variscan electric eel is named in memory of a zoologist, Vari.

Electric eels in an aquarium | Steven Johnson / Wikimedia Commons

It is not impossible to keep a pet that can discharge electricity, and now electric eels can be seen occasionally in the pet market. So are electric eels suitable for us to keep at home? I am conservative here. For us Homo sapiens, the safe voltage is 36 volts. The household voltage in my country is 220 volts, and the voltage generated by adult electric eels is much higher than this. Although it is difficult for a healthy adult to be fatally injured by a single electric shock, if children or the elderly at home are electrocuted, they are likely to fall and cause secondary injuries. If patients have pacemakers or other devices in their bodies, it may cause more serious risks. When we keep pets, we cannot just do it out of temporary hobbies. We should also consider the family members living under the same roof with you, and try to avoid keeping pets that may cause harm to people.