Animals: Electric Eel

Man is not the only animal which can produce electricity. No insect, no bird, no other mammal can, but five fishes are living dynamos. Of these the biggest and most potent is the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus), a wormish monster which lives in the freshwater marshes of northern South America, grows over 8 ft. long and thick as a man’s thigh, can send a shock through 28 ft. of water and stun the largest animal, including man.

Last week electric eels made news when from Belem, Brazil it was reported that a party of U. S. scientists had caught one 3 ft. long with a potential of 380 volts, more than triple the common U. S. house current. Electric eels have produced up to 500 volts. Local Indians long ago recognized the nature of the eel’s shocking power, naming the creature puraque, derived from their word for lightning bolt. But civilized man, in the Age of Electricity, though he understands the source of the firefly’s light does not know how Electrophorus becomes electric. Two years ago Christopher Coates, the New York Aquarium’s inquisitive tropical fishman, slipped an electric eel into a hard-rubber trough with metallic contacts an inch apart, discovered that it could light a neon lamp. That stunt became the Aquarium’s No. 1 attraction, with three performances daily. Branching his eel out into the field of ceremonial keypushers, he had it supply the initial impulse to start a police siren, a North River fireboat, an airplane; light a 2,000,000-candlepower beacon in Radio City; send a buzz over an NBC network.

Pursuing his researches, Curator Coates enlisted the aid of New York University’s Physicist Richard T. Cox, who helped him rig up testing apparatus which demonstrated that the eel’s current courses along its body at the rate of 1,000 meters per second, approximately ten times the speed at which impulses travel along the nerves of man. Last January, Physicist Cox & party set sail for Brazil to delve further into the eel’s mysteries. Last week’s capture was the first news from them, but next fortnight they will start home with their findings. Christopher Coates snorts at the idea of an Eel Light & Power Co., but does believe that study of the eel’s current may teach man to improve electric generating apparatus.