Viewing / tourism (2010s band)
TicketedSafari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.
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.
Money around the electric eel is regional even when the brand is global.
Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.
Encounter bands
Conflict / livestock loss
Local & episodicPredation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.
Fishery / take value
CommodityWhere the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.
Captive / zoo husbandry
InstitutionalAnnual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.
Enforcement / reserve ops
PublicRanger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.
Regions
North America
ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.
United Kingdom and Ireland
RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.
European Union / wider Europe
Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.
Range-state core
The biological centre of the electric eel -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.
Australia and New Zealand
DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.
Global trade desks
CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.
Key range numbers
24Atlas speed
77Atlas resilience
28Atlas cultural impact
34Atlas ecological role
Field programmes
INPA and Amazon universities
Basin taxonomy and holding tanks.
Vanderbilt Catania lab
Hunt kinematics that rewrote textbooks.
Smithsonian / MPEG
Collections that held the 2019 split material.
Brazilian IBAMA
Wildlife permits for a Least Concern celebrity.
Public aquaria
Safety protocols for live exhibits.
Hydropower consultants
The unromantic census in dam papers.
Keep exploring
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