Pre-industrial emblem
20Heraldry, materia medica or first-fish law met the electric eel before film.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed24
Intelligence25
Range28
Resilience77
Cultural impact28
Ecological role34
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
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.
Electric eel culture is local: the same silhouette is a licence in one country and a logo in another.
Status bars are editorial -- they track how loudly this type spoke in English-language media and law, not a best-species score.
Status through time
Industrial take
48Canneries, ivory, longlines or shikar scaled the take.
Cinema and logo
30A film, book or NGO mark often outran the field paper.
Statute and listing
61ESA, CITES, IWC or national parks made the type a legal object.
Live-cam and tourism
28Streams, jeeps and auctions are the present tense of attention.
Portrayals
Travel book1800s
Humboldt scene reprinted until it felt like a method.
Physics lecture19th c.
Volta piles and animal electricity shared a slide.
Nature Comm paper2019
Three names and an 860 V figure reset textbooks.
YouTube tank2010s
Pet shocks as entertainment -- a poor voltmeter.
Vanderbilt video2014-
High-speed frames that papers could cite.
Hydropower EIA2020s
A line-item fish in a dam appendix.
Rituals
Field shocking demos
Station visitors still ask for a spark -- researchers now refuse more often.
Tank grounding talks
Public aquaria treat Electrophorus as a safety brief, not a petting fish.
Species-label updates
Museums quietly split old electricus jars after 2019.
Sayings
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