Amazon knifefishes whose stacked electrocytes taught Humboldt, Volta arguments and a 2019 species split.
Also called: Electrophorus · poraquê · electric knifefish
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
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.
Field guides collapse many lineages into the English word electric eel. Subspecies, flyways and captive lines do not share one fate -- bald eagles and Philippine eagles, or western and mountain gorillas, are the caution.
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 CR cousin.
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.
English-language culture met the electric eel through film, law, heraldry and zoos. 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 vehicle ECU.
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.
Licensed photographs of this species — heroes, eras and icons on one wall.
Same family, different scores — pick a duel.
Closest neighbours on the six atlas axes — speed, intelligence, range, resilience, culture and ecological role.
Beak-toothed inflators whose tetrodotoxin made a Japanese cuisine and a genome project out of one family.
Overall 41 🐠Anemone-dwelling damselfish whose 2003 film fame became a capture-and-reef case study.
Overall 41 🦩Long-legged filter feeders whose bent bills and carotenoid diets turn alkaline lakes into pink cities.
Overall 52 🎏Domesticated carp whose Niigata colour mutations became a global pond aesthetic -- not a wild goldfish substitute.
Overall 42Apex lamnid whose warm muscle, broad diet and 1975 cinema still outrun the tagging papers.
Overall 66 🐟Anadromous fishes that move ocean fat onto spawning gravels -- and into forests, treaties and hydropower fights.
Overall 63 🐟A warm-bodied tuna whose Tokyo auction prices and ICCAT quotas made a single fish into a geopolitical unit.
Overall 54 🐠Anemone-dwelling damselfish whose 2003 film fame became a capture-and-reef case study.
Overall 41 🐴Upright syngnathids whose male pregnancy and dried-medicine trade made a small fish a CITES case.
Overall 28 🎏Domesticated carp whose Niigata colour mutations became a global pond aesthetic -- not a wild goldfish substitute.
Overall 42 🐡Beak-toothed inflators whose tetrodotoxin made a Japanese cuisine and a genome project out of one family.
Overall 41