Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Is an electric eel a true eel?
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.
Anatomy overlay
Numbered teaching hotspots on the species still — not a clinical diagnosis.
- 1 Primary weapon or tool — The bill, teeth, trunk, pouch or talon that field guides name first -- and that trade or c
- 2 Energy store — Fat, cache, crop or bamboo hours that decide whether a season closes.
- 3 Natal or breeding site — A redd, eyrie, den, anemone or ice lair -- often a single-point risk (Izumi, Natron, Gir).
- 4 Sensory organ — Active electrolocation plus the same organ used as a club. Eyes are secondary in tannin wa
- 5 Human interface — Hunt, tourism, film or quota -- the surface where electric eel biology meets English-langu
Every electric eel is a stack of tissues that must agree under season, prey and human pressure.
Meters below repeat the six atlas scores as gauges; they are relative marks, not laboratory certificates.
Systems
Support and integument
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.
Feeding apparatus
Night hunting of fish and invertebrates. High-voltage volleys are metabolically expensive; weak pulses map the murk more cheaply. The feeding kit sets the ecological-role score relative to the other 23 types.
Respiration and circulation
Gas exchange and blood flow are tuned to the electric eel energy budget -- dive, hover, sprint or bulk browse -- not to a generic vertebrate template.
Senses and neural control
Active electrolocation plus the same organ used as a club. Eyes are secondary in tannin water.
Reproduction and ontogeny
Replacement rate is the hidden resilience number. Air-breathing helps a stagnant pool; a dam and a drought do not care about voltage. LC is a range statement.
Thermoregulation and salt/water
Climate and osmoregulation bound where a electric eel can close its daily budget. Field sites in the English-speaking world still measure that envelope first.
Relative meters
Hotspots
Primary weapon or tool
The bill, teeth, trunk, pouch or talon that field guides name first -- and that trade or conflict usually targets.
Energy store
Fat, cache, crop or bamboo hours that decide whether a season closes.
Natal or breeding site
A redd, eyrie, den, anemone or ice lair -- often a single-point risk (Izumi, Natron, Gir).
Sensory organ
Active electrolocation plus the same organ used as a club. Eyes are secondary in tannin water.
Human interface
Hunt, tourism, film or quota -- the surface where electric eel biology meets English-language law.
Tissues & materials
Keratin and integument
Feathers, fur, baleen or skin plates -- tissues, not metals. Moult and wear are the maintenance cycle.
Bone and cartilage
Load paths for stoop, lunge, knuckle-walk or hover. Marrow and pneumatic bone differ by family.
Muscle and tendon
The expensive tissue that speed and intelligence scores only hint at.
Fat, oil and glycogen
Stores that migration, fast and lactation spend. A market for those stores (oil, ivory, fin) is a historical threat.
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