Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Marine Science => Topic started by: chris on 15/06/2017 08:03:21
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Bruce says:
Is it possible to duplicate the electric eel's method to produce current? Would it be used as a battery?
I'm an avid follower and strongly recommend other senior citizens use your podcast to stimulate their minds (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts).
What do you think?
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The Kon-Tiki expedition (1947) reported a radio being powered by an electric eel after being damaged and immersed in seawater.
I recall being impressed by this when reading Heyerdahl's book in the 1950s, but memories fade and it struck me as pretty unlikely at the time. However I now discover that his crewmen Haugland amd Raaby were former Resistance radio operators and the story is therefore no more unbelievable than many others I have heard about makeshift radio communication, from my parents' generation.
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Electric eels have a finite capacity - Alexander Humboldt saw electric eels captured by sending horses into a pond.
The eels attacked the horses; when the eels were exhausted, the eels were easily captured. Unfortunately, some of the horses did not survive the encounter.
The electric eels tend to produce very short impulses of high voltage, but the average power is fairly low.
Most of an electric eel's food intake will be spent on metabolism, so while they do produce electricity, it is not a very efficient process.
See:
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Alexander Humboldt saw electric eels captured by sending horses into a pond.
The eels attacked the horses; when the eels were exhausted, the eels were easily captured. Unfortunately, some of the horses did not survive the encounter.
That's an amazing anecdote - do you happen to have a reference for it?
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When eels attack? That sounds like a cult B movie.
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do you happen to have a reference for it?
It's all in the Youtube Video (about 5 minutes).
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A really nice paper came out in Current Biology this month on electric eels and how they are ten times more powerful than a TASER (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/science-news/electric-eel-ten-times-power-taser).
The above is a link to the synopsis I wrote, accompanied by the published reference, for those that might want to follow up.
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PETA would certainly not like it.
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Ok I want to start a predator tank with a ribbon eel in future but have no clue on what to feed or how to set up also minimum tank size and what other fish could I put in with it
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Ok I want to start a predator tank with a ribbon eel in future but have no clue on what to feed or how to set up also minimum tank size and what other fish could I put in with it
This is a very old thread and is not directly related to the question you are asking. I would advise you to start a new thread about your question.
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what kind of eel can I put in a 90 gallon tank. Im would also like to have a dwarf lionfish or any lionfish, and any clownfish. Is that way over stock? Or could I do a lot of water changes. If there is more room then could you suggest any other fish. Thanks for reading this.