Electric eel is one of 24 types in this animals atlas. The pages treat it as a full system -- history, anatomy, operating principles, culture, icons, future pressure and market shape -- not a ranking of a best species.
Scores compare the electric eel with the other 23 types on speed, intelligence, range, resilience, cultural impact and ecological role. They are relative editorial marks. Resilience high means more secure; low means threatened. Electrophorus electricus is Least Concern on a basin scale; local drought, dams and the pet trade are the finer risks.
Seven chapters follow: origins, systems, how the animal works, cultural life, named icons, what conservation can still change, and how tourism, conflict, fisheries and parks move money.
Deep introduction
Deep dive: Electric eel
Electric eel is not a single postcard animal. It is a set of populations, subspecies and human rules inside the fish family of this atlas.
Diversity, bodies, culture and ranges — plus a lens tuned to this language region.
Diversity inside the type
Field guides collapse many lineages into the word electric eel. Subspecies, flyways and captive lines do not share one fate.
This atlas picks a Wikipedia title as the hero image and then keeps the rest of the grade in view so a recovered stock cannot launder a Critically Endangered cousin.
Life in the landscape
An elongated knifefish with a long anal fin and three electric organs of stacked electrocytes. True eels they are not; the battery is the point of the body.
Night hunting of fish and invertebrates. High-voltage volleys are metabolically expensive; weak pulses map the murk more cheaply.
Culture and meaning
Culture met the electric eel through film, law, heraldry, zoos and local story. Those portrayals move money and sometimes take; they are not a field census.
The culture chapter dates posters and statutes so a 1975 film or a 1961 logo cannot pretend to be a 2020s Red List.
Conservation and money
Electrophorus electricus is Least Concern on a basin scale; local drought, dams and the pet trade are the finer risks.
Tourism, conflict payments, quotas and captive loans are dated economic bands in the market chapter -- not live prices and not a best-species prize.
Life-science deep dive
Biology deep dive: Electric eel
Electric eel biology is a stack of structure, energy, sensing and hard limits. The four sections below are the same headings used across the atlas so types can be compared without a best-species frame.
Anatomy, senses, behaviour and limits — plus field language for this region.
Structure
An elongated knifefish with a long anal fin and three electric organs of stacked electrocytes. True eels they are not; the battery is the point of the body.
Load paths and tissues (not metals) are expanded in the anatomy chapter.
Energy and foraging
Night hunting of fish and invertebrates. High-voltage volleys are metabolically expensive; weak pulses map the murk more cheaply.
The how-it-works diagrams reduce that budget to a six-node loop.
Senses and control
Active electrolocation plus the same organ used as a club. Eyes are secondary in tannin water.
Control here means the animal steering itself -- not a machine dashboard.
Limits
Air-breathing helps a stagnant pool; a dam and a drought do not care about voltage. LC is a range statement.
Resilience scores encode those limits relative to the other 23 types.
Four other atlas types, six terms, three threads and three local notes -- a map out of the electric eel page without leaving the 24-id taxonomy.
See-also species, key terms, adjacent threads and regional notes for this language.
See also
🐡PufferfishAnother fish famous for a weaponised physiology (TTX vs voltage).
🦈Great white sharkAnother hunter that uses electroreception -- ampullae versus a whole-body battery.
🐟SalmonA river fish whose politics are dams; eels meet the same concrete on a different continent.
🐠ClownfishAquarium-trade contrast -- shock versus orange bars.
Key terms
Electrocyte
Disc-like cell stacked in series -- the battery plate of the electric organ.
Electrophorus voltai
2019 species -- the high-voltage record holder, named for Volta.
Humboldt 1800
Alexander von Humboldt account of horses driven into eels -- a travel-science set piece.
Sachs and Hunter organs
Anatomical names for the main and accessory electric organs.
EOL
Electric organ discharge -- pulse trains for hunt, defence and (weaker) electrolocation.
Gymnotiform
Neotropical knifefishes; the eel is a knifefish that grew a battery, not a true eel.
Habitat and movement
Where the electric eel breeds and feeds is the first constraint. Single lakes, islands and forests appear again in the history timeline.
Range scores in this atlas mark how widely that movement runs -- albatross and blue whale high, koi and panda low -- not a quality ranking.
Research and law
Named projects (Project Tiger, ACAP, ICCAT, Amboseli) are the conservation bureaucracy of the type.
Listings and downlists are dated events in the timeline, not eternal essences.
Culture and price
Film, auction and logo years are filed under culture and market so they cannot masquerade as demography.
The icons chapter keeps eight real Wikipedia titles so a later language pack can attach the same faces.
Visual field notes
Licensed photographs of this species — heroes, eras and icons on one wall.
Steven G. JohnsonSteven G. JohnsonSteven G. JohnsonJoseph Karl StielerUnknown authorSteven G. Johnsonhttp://acta.inpa.gov.br/logo_inpa/principal/inpa_principal.jpgUnidentified painter
The profile
Speed24
Intelligence25
Range28
Resilience77
Cultural impact28
Ecological role34
Pin anatomy against behaviour
Pick one anatomy system and one operating fact already on this species page. A reading pair — not a winner board.
Browsing aid inside this atlas. Field biology and local law decide any real encounter. No live feed.
No. It is a gymnotiform knifefish. The body plan and voltage organ are South American, not Anguilliform.
How many species are there now?
A 2019 Nature Communications paper split Electrophorus into three: E. electricus, E. voltai and E. varii. Voltage and DNA both argued for the split.
How strong is the shock?
E. voltai has been measured near 860 V. That is a prey-stun and defence pulse, not a household-current analogy that holds in every tank.
What did Humboldt actually do in 1800?
His account of horses herded into a pool of eels became a European science anecdote. Later readers treated it as a method; it was also travel theatre.
Did electric eels inspire the battery?
Volta and Galvani debates used animal electricity. Electrophorus was a New World exhibit in that argument, not the sole inventor of the pile.
How do they hunt?
A high-voltage volley can freeze prey; a weaker field maps the night water. Kenneth Catania high-speed videos in the 2010s showed doublets that twitch hidden fish.
Are they Least Concern because they shock people?
No. LC reflects a wide Amazon-Orinoco footprint. Dams, drought and capture are local, not a comic-book immunity.
Can a tank specimen represent the wild organ?
Captive voltage and diet differ. Field E. voltai numbers should not be read off a pet-shop tube.
Role, not a winner
Conservation literacy. Not a live IUCN fetch.
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Similar species
Closest neighbours on the six atlas axes — speed, intelligence, range, resilience, culture and ecological role.
