July 10, 2014 • 20 mins
How does the electric eel generate its juice and how did six different lineages of bioelectric fish evolve on this planet of ours? Find out in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Tucklas. Julie.
I'm going to share a story that I read about
and uh that that I frequently come back to him
in my mind, and that uh, this takes place a
(00:25):
few years before the death of Marlon Brando. This is
a fictional story. This is apparently a true story according
to ed Baby Jr. Um So it's a few years
before Brando's death. I think, uh, who died in two
thousand four. Of course, everyone's coming with Brando for The
Godfather Apocalypse now, um countless other films to Moro's island. Yes,
(00:48):
I mean, I mean he's he was. He was a
crazy man and uh and his uh he was an
incredibly talented actor. But he was in some really bad
films as well some really good ones. He was in
some really scandalous films. I mean he he was. He
was a perfect Hollywood icon in every respect. But a
(01:09):
few years before he died, he summoned actor environmentalist At
Bagley Junior to his Mulholland Drive estate and according to
to Bagley, Brando wanted some feedback on a scheme to
power his home with electric eels, and I guess he
you know, he contacted vaguely out of the blue, because
Baguley was, you know, it was and still is into
(01:30):
all sorts of green energy, environmentalism, and it would seem
like the kind of guy you would ask about this.
But Baguley was, of course dumbfounded by this because he's
he's not an advocate or was not an advocate of
powering your house with electric eels. So he told Brando,
I'm not sure that can be done. I've never heard
of anybody doing that. And uh And according to to
(01:51):
at Bagley Junior, Brando grumbled, everything's no with you, and
then and then dismissed him as I want to know
what else was no with Ed Begley Jr. It was
so disappointed in him for ye it was it. It
was it weekly calls to say, all right, how about this,
how about Woodchuck's. Can wood Chuck's power my house? And
it's like, I don't think that's possible. It's like, oh,
(02:12):
you won't allow anything, Baguley. What's the matter with you?
You're such such a negative force. In my life, Bagley.
You know there's an aquarium in Japan that actually used
electric eels to power a Christmas tree. I've seen this.
The video is pretty impressive. Of course. One of the
things here and and ultimately the reason that that Baguley
was not able to say yes to Mr Brando is
(02:34):
that it's only powering that that Christmas tree in bursts.
It's capable of the electric eel, which is actually not
an eel but a type of camorative of the catfish,
can pump out an alarming amount of electricity, but in
short burst because this has evolved us as a means
of ultimately evolved as a means for the electric eel
(02:56):
to to stun prey or potential predators, not to power
Christmas tree lights or fancy Hollywood homes. Oh well, you
know you can't blame him for thinking it up right.
I mean, humans have been messing around with electric fish
for quite some time. Um. It's true. Roman Emperor Charles
the fifth reputedly died from indigestion after eating an eel pie.
(03:20):
So someone thought that that was a good idea to
have a little electric eel pie heard that one. Yeah,
the Dutch Society of Sciences published a set of treatises
in seventeen sixty two espousing the use of electric eels
to cure headache pain. Yeah. I've also I read that
the ancient Egyptian used the torpedo, an electric marine ray
in an early form of electrotherapy to tweet to tweet epilepsy.
(03:44):
I give props to that one a little bit, you
know what I'm saying, Like, well, you know they were
they were sort of onto something there. Yeah. I like
that when I could see that one picking back up again. Um,
you know, animal rights issues and notwithstanding, I was thinking
in post apocalyptic scenario which electric eels and humans survived.
Oh yeah, and you carry one around in a tank
on your back. Um yeah. Another interesting case in Victorian times,
(04:08):
parties were apparently organized and guests would form a chain
to experience the shock of an electric fish. Because this
is there's something marvelous about this. Here is this animal,
this fish, the simple fish, and it is producing this uh,
this this product that powers our world. That's what I
love about the Victorian ages. I feel like they sort
of finally peeled up their eyelids or had enough technology
(04:30):
and knowledge that they were really starting to look at
biology and and particularly looking at um creatures in the
sea and finding out how wonderful and majestic and weird
they were. So I can only imagine this sort of
excitement that must have been. You know, where is that
we have our steampunk in various related punks. Where is
our electric eel punk? That could be a whole setting again.
(04:53):
You know Victorian individuals walking around a tank on their
back with an electric eel in it or two h
somehow empowering their gadgets. There you go. We also have
Benjamin Franklin and other pioneering sign just using yield electric
eels to learn about electricity, so we can thank electric eels.
So what we're talking about here are electrogenic organisms um
(05:18):
and uh and it's and it's interesting the the electric
eel gets most of the credit because it it is
the most impressive example of an electrogenic organism, but we
actually see quite a few fish with this power. Now,
there are more than thirty thousand total fish species out
there in the world, but upwards of three and fifty
(05:40):
are electrogenic, right, so they're not that many. However, here
in the Amazon, then you're going to see many more
of them, and it's sort of a common thing. Um,
but yeah, across the boarder there are not a ton
of them, but there are six different lineages, I believe.
So it's it's a kind of thing that it's not
like it involved in in one place. It involved Uh,
they're covergently in different spots across the globe. Yeah. Now
(06:05):
they generate their own electrical field using a specialized organ
and as you say, that's called electrogenic. And then fish
that can detect electric fields are called electro receptive. Now
that doesn't mean that because they're electroc receptive, they're actually electrogenic. Um.
This is sort of like you know, a test right here.
It's not you know, that doesn't automatically make that. It
(06:27):
just means that they are a little bit more receptive
to that field. Yeah. So we have this passive electro
reception which evolves so that fish could detect weak, naturally
occurring bioelectric signals, uh, you know, in their in their
aquatic environments. And according to Markie Nelson and Current Biology,
electrogenic organs which which we're gonna talk about here, Um,
(06:49):
they properly originated with a set of highly active skeletal
muscles that generated sufficient electrical activity to be detectable by
the fishes own electro receptors. And then this is used
then for navigat ation and communication, which we still see
as being the primary purpose and a lot of electric fish.
But then in some cases this evolves into a strong
electric um field that's used by strong electric fish to stunt, prey,
(07:13):
and or protect themselves. So we see this this evolution
of this uh, this electric potential in in in these creatures.
And it's important to remember that we're also taught we're
altom only talking about the evolution of muscle tissue here,
and even in a simple human, our muscles are bioelectric essentially,
so it's it's not like this is something that just
(07:34):
came out of the blue that's some sort of a
magical property. It's just the escalation of of of the
bioelectric nature of muscle tissue itself. Yeah, and we'll talk
about that in a bit about how this actually works.
But I wanted to through out there that some strongly
electric fish are found in the oceans, including the electric
star gazer also code astro scoopus, in certain skates in
(07:57):
rays such as the torpedo ray still have fresh water habitats,
including the South American electric eel electrophorus in the African
electric catfish a metapataurists. Most weakly electric fish are found
in freshwater rivers of African South America, and some species
of marine gates and rays are also weakly electric, so
(08:19):
they're widely dispersed. Yeah. Some of the the the weaker
electric fish are actually really interesting and I think are
often overlooked. For instance, there's Peter's elephant nose fish that
has this weird little UH levels looks like a little
elephant trunk or some sort of you know, extra long nose,
but it's not a nose. It's a sensitive mouth extension
covered with electro receptors and UH. And the creature it
(08:41):
has poor eyesight and it uses a weak electric field
which it generates UH with the with these with these
specialized cells to find food, navigate all in this dark
uh environment. Yeah, and I thought that was interesting that
it used it in place of eyes to do that
as well as to communicate sometimes like mating signals. Mating
(09:01):
signals play heavily into the into its usage among these
these these weaker electric fish. And just to put a
voltage on these Uh, these more powerful electric fish that
we're talking about here. The electric eel you generally see
six hundred volts, sometimes as high as six fifty um.
The electric catfish that you mentioned generally up to three
fifty volts, and electric rays, of which they're sixty nine
(09:24):
species eight to two volts. Yeah. Now those electric eels
six hundred volts. That's five times the power of a
standard US wall socket. So if anybody has ever as
a child or even as an adult, you know, put
your finger in a wall socket or put like a
Christmas ornament in there, then you can sort of understand
the sort of jolt that you would get on the
(09:45):
other side of that. In fact, that would pretty much
like lay out a human being for a little while. Yeah,
now we're talking as it can be a big creature.
We're talking six to eight feet in link. But still
it's I think it's it's easy to forget that they
do pack that much of a punch. It's easy to think,
all electric fish, how how powerful could it be? How
much electricity could have fished generate? And it it basically
(10:06):
comes out to what ten volts per foot of fish. Yeah,
according to Michael Sussman, who directs the Biotechnology Center at
the University of Wisconsin. A six foot long electric eel
is basically I love this description, a six inch fish
attached to a five and a half foot cattle prod.
And that all those intestines and stomachs and all that
(10:27):
stuff is right like right up close to the head.
So the rest of the electric eel is essentially an
electric organ. It's like of that um of that electric
eel's weight is the electric organ. Yeah. I love the
way you put that, Like, basically six inch fish with
a bunch of electricity producing meat attached to it. This
(10:48):
is something that I recently did a blog post about
the monster the week post about the character Blanca from
the Street Fighter Games, which is kind of this green
ape that has the ability to shock an aquatic a. Uh.
That's my theory is because you would have to be
aquatic because you only see this kind of uh, you
only see electrogenic behavior in aquatic creatures. They needed that
(11:09):
they need the water as a conductor. But but yeah,
he produces the shock, and so I was trying to
sort of do the math. I was thinking, well, how
much if if an eel is doing uh, can volt
per foot then how much electricity would a man sized
eight creature generate? But it kind of breaks down when
you realize, all right, well this look how muscular this
eight is. Like how much spare tissue does a blank
(11:31):
I have for the generation of electricity and and to
and to to simply waste to spend on the specialized cells.
Not that much? So um, yeah, believe it, so believe
it or not, it's really difficult to to break down
the hard science of how this ridiculous creature from a
video game would work. It's still interesting and I think
(11:53):
sort of view into how this has become so specialized.
And uh, I wanted just to mention that the organs
tissue is a lot like muscle, but it can't contract,
all right, And we'll talk more about them the second.
The cells are big and they have all sorts of
features that let them pump out electricity without shocking the fish,
and the cells are stacked together like batteries in a
flashlight firing simultaneously, So that kind of gives you an
(12:17):
idea of that process that's happening internally. The crazy thing
about the electric eels that it is kind of I mean,
it's it's a really souped up creature like it's spent
so much of its biology is committed to this uh
this uh offensive defensive mechanism. But it has kind of
made it almost undefeatable. I mean, it's really not a
(12:38):
threatened organism, you know, except by by humans who have
removed themselves from the game entirely for the most part. Yeah,
I like that idea of souped up like a monster truck,
but instead of you know, giant wheels, trying that like
giant stacked up batteries. Because as you had said, all
muscle cells have that electrical potential, and you know, you
just have a simple contraction of a muscle and you
(12:59):
get a little bit of voltage. But Lindsay Trigger, a
biologists who works in suspens lab, says that if you
remove the ability of the muscle cell to contract as
we say, this happens electric eels, and you change the
distribution of proteins in the cell membrane. Now all they
do is push ions across a membrane to create a
massive flow of positive charge. And they've been able to
(13:22):
do this because they've had about a hundred million years
to specialize these muscle cells into larger cells which are
called electro sites. Now the whole you know, they're pumping
out this electricity, and you mentioned how they they largely
avoid shopping shocking themselves. This was really fascinating. According to Markey,
Nelson and Current Biology, the strongly of electric fish, such
(13:43):
as the electric eel, they do have these layers of
adipose and connective tissue that help electrically insulate their vital
organs uh and in the electric current that they produced
by the discharge, they tend to follow the path of
least resistance, so they flow around rather than through these
tissues UM. Researchers have observed electric eels sometimes twitching in
(14:06):
response to their own discharge, so it's it's not perfect.
There's like sometimes those electrical UH currents that they're generating
are going to to tweak their own tissue um and,
and the fine timing of this mechanism is pretty amazing.
There's a when when researchers have looked at electric fish,
they they found that the pacemaker nucleus that controls the
(14:27):
timing of the electric organ discharges is one of the
most temporarily precise biological oscillators ever measured, So they in
a sense electric fish like the electric eel, very precise timekeepers,
and they have they have pretty large brain to body
size ratios, So so some researchers speculator, these are pretty
(14:50):
smart creatures. Yeah, that's interesting that the out of post
that Fat is helping again is the installation UM salesmen
and other scientists. They sided that they wanted to figure
out how this kind of happened as much as they could, right,
and they analyze all the genes of the electric eel,
and then they looked at gene activity in other electric
(15:10):
fishes or fish from unrelated families, and they found that
six different species evolved independent systems for electric organs using
the same genetic toolbox. So we're talking about the same
set of thirty genes. And if I'm understanding this correctly,
it's that each of these six species were in a
way recreating the wheel for themselves as opposed to using
(15:32):
a blueprint, which I thought was surprising because usually when
we think about evolution, we think about evolution using that
blueprint because it's much easier. And for instance, you know
we've got our five fingers, and um, you'll see this
structure of bones and fingers and arms in many mammals
over and over again, so that it was very interesting
(15:56):
to know that there's a more of a lego rogue
lego approach on this, allowing each species to kind of
tweak their electric organs as needed. So what does this
mean for the future, Because I know that out there
listening to us right now, Brando's ghost wants to know
when when electric eels are really going to to help
(16:18):
out around the house um or even inside, uh, the
human body, right So and it you know, it turns
out that researchers are looking into this. Researchers from Yale
University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They
actually envision synthetic eel cells with improved energy efficiency bundled
altogether in a bio battery. So we're not yet quite
(16:40):
to the point where we could we could build artificial
versions of complex cells, but the researchers have created a
simplified battery based on the principles of the electric eel.
Two artificial cells, each containing a salt solution with a
lipid wall. If the salt concentrations are different than poking
the cells produces a slight charge. So laying the groundwork
(17:01):
for the future of an electric eel ish bio battery.
I hope they call it a Brando battery. Yeah, so
that lipid wall, I guess would be the thing that
insulates it, right like that out of past tissue think
so yeah, very cool. And then another possible use for this,
and this comes from biot just Lindsay Tragger who who
(17:22):
was a part of that study we were discussing earlier,
to to look at the genome of the electric eel um.
According to her, we may reach the day where we
could actually have a little electric organs uh built in
to say a pacemaker to power it inside the human body.
So so again it's kind of the bio body princess,
(17:43):
the bio battery principle, except taking place with at much
smaller scale inside the human body as a part of
a pacemaker or other implanted medical device. And the reason
you want to do this is that means that you
don't have to undergo all these invasive procedures to replace
the batteries or the peacemaker ideally, right, And I love
(18:03):
this idea. I just can't quite square it yet, Like
I'm thinking about this organ in folding the pacemaker and
it but it's you know, it's been engineered to be
this electric organ coexisting in a human body where there
are weak electric fields. So you know what I'm saying, Like,
I can't quite see how that would work yet, because
you really have to in creating a bioelectric cybernetic organ
(18:28):
you really have to then take into account that you're
in planning it into a human which is still essentially
a bioelectric organism itself. And how do you square all
that away? It seems to get pretty complicated pretty fast.
But I mean, we're already putting battery powered electronic devices
inside a human body, so so eventually, right, yeah, we'll
(18:49):
leave it to the scientists. Yeah, and I think it's
it's promising science. So Mr Brando, wherever you are, um
Ed Bagley Jr. May say no, but we're gonna go
ahead and give a attentative yes on this issue. All right, Um,
do you guys have thoughts on this? Have you ever
seen an electric eel in person? Have you been shocked
(19:09):
by one? Do you throw Victorian retro parties and try
this party trick out? Let us know and and if indeed,
if you have any examples of electric eel punk literature
UM films comic books, etcetera. I'd love to know about
it because because I feel like that is a largely
ignored area of possibility there. So where can you find us?
(19:34):
Where can you look up all of our podcasts, our videos,
are blog posts, et cetera. You can find us at
stuff to blow your mind dot com. That is the homepage,
that's the mother's ship. You'll also find links out to
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our YouTube account which is Mine Stuff Show. And there's
still an old fashioned way to get in touch with us.
(19:54):
So what what can they do to if they want
to hook the old computer up to an electric eel
and uh blasted out and an email? Well, if you
do that successfully, and I hope that you do, you
can send that email to blow the mind at how
staff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Tucklas. Julie.
I'm going to share a story that I read about
and uh that that I frequently come back to him
in my mind, and that uh, this takes place a
(00:25):
few years before the death of Marlon Brando. This is
a fictional story. This is apparently a true story according
to ed Baby Jr. Um So it's a few years
before Brando's death. I think, uh, who died in two
thousand four. Of course, everyone's coming with Brando for The
Godfather Apocalypse now, um countless other films to Moro's island. Yes,
(00:48):
I mean, I mean he's he was. He was a
crazy man and uh and his uh he was an
incredibly talented actor. But he was in some really bad
films as well some really good ones. He was in
some really scandalous films. I mean he he was. He
was a perfect Hollywood icon in every respect. But a
(01:09):
few years before he died, he summoned actor environmentalist At
Bagley Junior to his Mulholland Drive estate and according to
to Bagley, Brando wanted some feedback on a scheme to
power his home with electric eels, and I guess he
you know, he contacted vaguely out of the blue, because
Baguley was, you know, it was and still is into
(01:30):
all sorts of green energy, environmentalism, and it would seem
like the kind of guy you would ask about this.
But Baguley was, of course dumbfounded by this because he's
he's not an advocate or was not an advocate of
powering your house with electric eels. So he told Brando,
I'm not sure that can be done. I've never heard
of anybody doing that. And uh And according to to
(01:51):
at Bagley Junior, Brando grumbled, everything's no with you, and
then and then dismissed him as I want to know
what else was no with Ed Begley Jr. It was
so disappointed in him for ye it was it. It
was it weekly calls to say, all right, how about this,
how about Woodchuck's. Can wood Chuck's power my house? And
it's like, I don't think that's possible. It's like, oh,
(02:12):
you won't allow anything, Baguley. What's the matter with you?
You're such such a negative force. In my life, Bagley.
You know there's an aquarium in Japan that actually used
electric eels to power a Christmas tree. I've seen this.
The video is pretty impressive. Of course. One of the
things here and and ultimately the reason that that Baguley
was not able to say yes to Mr Brando is
(02:34):
that it's only powering that that Christmas tree in bursts.
It's capable of the electric eel, which is actually not
an eel but a type of camorative of the catfish,
can pump out an alarming amount of electricity, but in
short burst because this has evolved us as a means
of ultimately evolved as a means for the electric eel
(02:56):
to to stun prey or potential predators, not to power
Christmas tree lights or fancy Hollywood homes. Oh well, you
know you can't blame him for thinking it up right.
I mean, humans have been messing around with electric fish
for quite some time. Um. It's true. Roman Emperor Charles
the fifth reputedly died from indigestion after eating an eel pie.
(03:20):
So someone thought that that was a good idea to
have a little electric eel pie heard that one. Yeah,
the Dutch Society of Sciences published a set of treatises
in seventeen sixty two espousing the use of electric eels
to cure headache pain. Yeah. I've also I read that
the ancient Egyptian used the torpedo, an electric marine ray
in an early form of electrotherapy to tweet to tweet epilepsy.
(03:44):
I give props to that one a little bit, you
know what I'm saying, Like, well, you know they were
they were sort of onto something there. Yeah. I like
that when I could see that one picking back up again. Um,
you know, animal rights issues and notwithstanding, I was thinking
in post apocalyptic scenario which electric eels and humans survived.
Oh yeah, and you carry one around in a tank
on your back. Um yeah. Another interesting case in Victorian times,
(04:08):
parties were apparently organized and guests would form a chain
to experience the shock of an electric fish. Because this
is there's something marvelous about this. Here is this animal,
this fish, the simple fish, and it is producing this uh,
this this product that powers our world. That's what I
love about the Victorian ages. I feel like they sort
of finally peeled up their eyelids or had enough technology
(04:30):
and knowledge that they were really starting to look at
biology and and particularly looking at um creatures in the
sea and finding out how wonderful and majestic and weird
they were. So I can only imagine this sort of
excitement that must have been. You know, where is that
we have our steampunk in various related punks. Where is
our electric eel punk? That could be a whole setting again.
(04:53):
You know Victorian individuals walking around a tank on their
back with an electric eel in it or two h
somehow empowering their gadgets. There you go. We also have
Benjamin Franklin and other pioneering sign just using yield electric
eels to learn about electricity, so we can thank electric eels.
So what we're talking about here are electrogenic organisms um
(05:18):
and uh and it's and it's interesting the the electric
eel gets most of the credit because it it is
the most impressive example of an electrogenic organism, but we
actually see quite a few fish with this power. Now,
there are more than thirty thousand total fish species out
there in the world, but upwards of three and fifty
(05:40):
are electrogenic, right, so they're not that many. However, here
in the Amazon, then you're going to see many more
of them, and it's sort of a common thing. Um,
but yeah, across the boarder there are not a ton
of them, but there are six different lineages, I believe.
So it's it's a kind of thing that it's not
like it involved in in one place. It involved Uh,
they're covergently in different spots across the globe. Yeah. Now
(06:05):
they generate their own electrical field using a specialized organ
and as you say, that's called electrogenic. And then fish
that can detect electric fields are called electro receptive. Now
that doesn't mean that because they're electroc receptive, they're actually electrogenic. Um.
This is sort of like you know, a test right here.
It's not you know, that doesn't automatically make that. It
(06:27):
just means that they are a little bit more receptive
to that field. Yeah. So we have this passive electro
reception which evolves so that fish could detect weak, naturally
occurring bioelectric signals, uh, you know, in their in their
aquatic environments. And according to Markie Nelson and Current Biology,
electrogenic organs which which we're gonna talk about here, Um,
(06:49):
they properly originated with a set of highly active skeletal
muscles that generated sufficient electrical activity to be detectable by
the fishes own electro receptors. And then this is used
then for navigat ation and communication, which we still see
as being the primary purpose and a lot of electric fish.
But then in some cases this evolves into a strong
electric um field that's used by strong electric fish to stunt, prey,
(07:13):
and or protect themselves. So we see this this evolution
of this uh, this electric potential in in in these creatures.
And it's important to remember that we're also taught we're
altom only talking about the evolution of muscle tissue here,
and even in a simple human, our muscles are bioelectric essentially,
so it's it's not like this is something that just
(07:34):
came out of the blue that's some sort of a
magical property. It's just the escalation of of of the
bioelectric nature of muscle tissue itself. Yeah, and we'll talk
about that in a bit about how this actually works.
But I wanted to through out there that some strongly
electric fish are found in the oceans, including the electric
star gazer also code astro scoopus, in certain skates in
(07:57):
rays such as the torpedo ray still have fresh water habitats,
including the South American electric eel electrophorus in the African
electric catfish a metapataurists. Most weakly electric fish are found
in freshwater rivers of African South America, and some species
of marine gates and rays are also weakly electric, so
(08:19):
they're widely dispersed. Yeah. Some of the the the weaker
electric fish are actually really interesting and I think are
often overlooked. For instance, there's Peter's elephant nose fish that
has this weird little UH levels looks like a little
elephant trunk or some sort of you know, extra long nose,
but it's not a nose. It's a sensitive mouth extension
covered with electro receptors and UH. And the creature it
(08:41):
has poor eyesight and it uses a weak electric field
which it generates UH with the with these with these
specialized cells to find food, navigate all in this dark
uh environment. Yeah, and I thought that was interesting that
it used it in place of eyes to do that
as well as to communicate sometimes like mating signals. Mating
(09:01):
signals play heavily into the into its usage among these
these these weaker electric fish. And just to put a
voltage on these Uh, these more powerful electric fish that
we're talking about here. The electric eel you generally see
six hundred volts, sometimes as high as six fifty um.
The electric catfish that you mentioned generally up to three
fifty volts, and electric rays, of which they're sixty nine
(09:24):
species eight to two volts. Yeah. Now those electric eels
six hundred volts. That's five times the power of a
standard US wall socket. So if anybody has ever as
a child or even as an adult, you know, put
your finger in a wall socket or put like a
Christmas ornament in there, then you can sort of understand
the sort of jolt that you would get on the
(09:45):
other side of that. In fact, that would pretty much
like lay out a human being for a little while. Yeah,
now we're talking as it can be a big creature.
We're talking six to eight feet in link. But still
it's I think it's it's easy to forget that they
do pack that much of a punch. It's easy to think,
all electric fish, how how powerful could it be? How
much electricity could have fished generate? And it it basically
(10:06):
comes out to what ten volts per foot of fish. Yeah,
according to Michael Sussman, who directs the Biotechnology Center at
the University of Wisconsin. A six foot long electric eel
is basically I love this description, a six inch fish
attached to a five and a half foot cattle prod.
And that all those intestines and stomachs and all that
(10:27):
stuff is right like right up close to the head.
So the rest of the electric eel is essentially an
electric organ. It's like of that um of that electric
eel's weight is the electric organ. Yeah. I love the
way you put that, Like, basically six inch fish with
a bunch of electricity producing meat attached to it. This
(10:48):
is something that I recently did a blog post about
the monster the week post about the character Blanca from
the Street Fighter Games, which is kind of this green
ape that has the ability to shock an aquatic a. Uh.
That's my theory is because you would have to be
aquatic because you only see this kind of uh, you
only see electrogenic behavior in aquatic creatures. They needed that
(11:09):
they need the water as a conductor. But but yeah,
he produces the shock, and so I was trying to
sort of do the math. I was thinking, well, how
much if if an eel is doing uh, can volt
per foot then how much electricity would a man sized
eight creature generate? But it kind of breaks down when
you realize, all right, well this look how muscular this
eight is. Like how much spare tissue does a blank
(11:31):
I have for the generation of electricity and and to
and to to simply waste to spend on the specialized cells.
Not that much? So um, yeah, believe it, so believe
it or not, it's really difficult to to break down
the hard science of how this ridiculous creature from a
video game would work. It's still interesting and I think
(11:53):
sort of view into how this has become so specialized.
And uh, I wanted just to mention that the organs
tissue is a lot like muscle, but it can't contract,
all right, And we'll talk more about them the second.
The cells are big and they have all sorts of
features that let them pump out electricity without shocking the fish,
and the cells are stacked together like batteries in a
flashlight firing simultaneously, So that kind of gives you an
(12:17):
idea of that process that's happening internally. The crazy thing
about the electric eels that it is kind of I mean,
it's it's a really souped up creature like it's spent
so much of its biology is committed to this uh
this uh offensive defensive mechanism. But it has kind of
made it almost undefeatable. I mean, it's really not a
(12:38):
threatened organism, you know, except by by humans who have
removed themselves from the game entirely for the most part. Yeah,
I like that idea of souped up like a monster truck,
but instead of you know, giant wheels, trying that like
giant stacked up batteries. Because as you had said, all
muscle cells have that electrical potential, and you know, you
just have a simple contraction of a muscle and you
(12:59):
get a little bit of voltage. But Lindsay Trigger, a
biologists who works in suspens lab, says that if you
remove the ability of the muscle cell to contract as
we say, this happens electric eels, and you change the
distribution of proteins in the cell membrane. Now all they
do is push ions across a membrane to create a
massive flow of positive charge. And they've been able to
(13:22):
do this because they've had about a hundred million years
to specialize these muscle cells into larger cells which are
called electro sites. Now the whole you know, they're pumping
out this electricity, and you mentioned how they they largely
avoid shopping shocking themselves. This was really fascinating. According to Markey,
Nelson and Current Biology, the strongly of electric fish, such
(13:43):
as the electric eel, they do have these layers of
adipose and connective tissue that help electrically insulate their vital
organs uh and in the electric current that they produced
by the discharge, they tend to follow the path of
least resistance, so they flow around rather than through these
tissues UM. Researchers have observed electric eels sometimes twitching in
(14:06):
response to their own discharge, so it's it's not perfect.
There's like sometimes those electrical UH currents that they're generating
are going to to tweak their own tissue um and,
and the fine timing of this mechanism is pretty amazing.
There's a when when researchers have looked at electric fish,
they they found that the pacemaker nucleus that controls the
(14:27):
timing of the electric organ discharges is one of the
most temporarily precise biological oscillators ever measured, So they in
a sense electric fish like the electric eel, very precise timekeepers,
and they have they have pretty large brain to body
size ratios, So so some researchers speculator, these are pretty
(14:50):
smart creatures. Yeah, that's interesting that the out of post
that Fat is helping again is the installation UM salesmen
and other scientists. They sided that they wanted to figure
out how this kind of happened as much as they could, right,
and they analyze all the genes of the electric eel,
and then they looked at gene activity in other electric
(15:10):
fishes or fish from unrelated families, and they found that
six different species evolved independent systems for electric organs using
the same genetic toolbox. So we're talking about the same
set of thirty genes. And if I'm understanding this correctly,
it's that each of these six species were in a
way recreating the wheel for themselves as opposed to using
(15:32):
a blueprint, which I thought was surprising because usually when
we think about evolution, we think about evolution using that
blueprint because it's much easier. And for instance, you know
we've got our five fingers, and um, you'll see this
structure of bones and fingers and arms in many mammals
over and over again, so that it was very interesting
(15:56):
to know that there's a more of a lego rogue
lego approach on this, allowing each species to kind of
tweak their electric organs as needed. So what does this
mean for the future, Because I know that out there
listening to us right now, Brando's ghost wants to know
when when electric eels are really going to to help
(16:18):
out around the house um or even inside, uh, the
human body, right So and it you know, it turns
out that researchers are looking into this. Researchers from Yale
University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They
actually envision synthetic eel cells with improved energy efficiency bundled
altogether in a bio battery. So we're not yet quite
(16:40):
to the point where we could we could build artificial
versions of complex cells, but the researchers have created a
simplified battery based on the principles of the electric eel.
Two artificial cells, each containing a salt solution with a
lipid wall. If the salt concentrations are different than poking
the cells produces a slight charge. So laying the groundwork
(17:01):
for the future of an electric eel ish bio battery.
I hope they call it a Brando battery. Yeah, so
that lipid wall, I guess would be the thing that
insulates it, right like that out of past tissue think
so yeah, very cool. And then another possible use for this,
and this comes from biot just Lindsay Tragger who who
(17:22):
was a part of that study we were discussing earlier,
to to look at the genome of the electric eel um.
According to her, we may reach the day where we
could actually have a little electric organs uh built in
to say a pacemaker to power it inside the human body.
So so again it's kind of the bio body princess,
(17:43):
the bio battery principle, except taking place with at much
smaller scale inside the human body as a part of
a pacemaker or other implanted medical device. And the reason
you want to do this is that means that you
don't have to undergo all these invasive procedures to replace
the batteries or the peacemaker ideally, right, And I love
(18:03):
this idea. I just can't quite square it yet, Like
I'm thinking about this organ in folding the pacemaker and
it but it's you know, it's been engineered to be
this electric organ coexisting in a human body where there
are weak electric fields. So you know what I'm saying, Like,
I can't quite see how that would work yet, because
you really have to in creating a bioelectric cybernetic organ
(18:28):
you really have to then take into account that you're
in planning it into a human which is still essentially
a bioelectric organism itself. And how do you square all
that away? It seems to get pretty complicated pretty fast.
But I mean, we're already putting battery powered electronic devices
inside a human body, so so eventually, right, yeah, we'll
(18:49):
leave it to the scientists. Yeah, and I think it's
it's promising science. So Mr Brando, wherever you are, um
Ed Bagley Jr. May say no, but we're gonna go
ahead and give a attentative yes on this issue. All right, Um,
do you guys have thoughts on this? Have you ever
seen an electric eel in person? Have you been shocked
(19:09):
by one? Do you throw Victorian retro parties and try
this party trick out? Let us know and and if indeed,
if you have any examples of electric eel punk literature
UM films comic books, etcetera. I'd love to know about
it because because I feel like that is a largely
ignored area of possibility there. So where can you find us?
(19:34):
Where can you look up all of our podcasts, our videos,
are blog posts, et cetera. You can find us at
stuff to blow your mind dot com. That is the homepage,
that's the mother's ship. You'll also find links out to
our various social media accounts there, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
our YouTube account which is Mine Stuff Show. And there's
still an old fashioned way to get in touch with us.
(19:54):
So what what can they do to if they want
to hook the old computer up to an electric eel
and uh blasted out and an email? Well, if you
do that successfully, and I hope that you do, you
can send that email to blow the mind at how
staff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com
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