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The average shock of an electric eel lasts about two thousandths of a second. The pain is not burning – unlike, for example, sticking your finger in a wall socket – but is not pleasant: a brief muscle contraction, then numbness.
For scientists studying the animal, the pain comes with the professional territory.
"I remember the first time I was shocked" said Carlos David de Santana, an ichthyologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, who remembered being dropped and dropped his equipment. "I was scared. "Mr. Santana has suffered several high-voltage attacks during his eel study years, including one of nearly 400 volts.
He is the main author of A study published Tuesday in Nature Communications describing the discovery of a new species of electric eel, Electrophorus voltai. Named after Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who invented the battery, this battery can generate an electric shock of 860 volts, the most powerful of all known animals. During the process, researchers realized that what was considered for centuries as a single species of electric eel, Electrophorus voltai, actually three.
"It's literally shocking when you discover a new diversity in such an appealing fish that was first described 250 years ago," said Dr. de Santana. He fell in love with the serpentine freshwater fish during the summers of his childhood on his grandparents' farm, where he observed them while wading in the nearby Amazon.
The electric eel has long excited the popular imagination. But its biodiversity has been largely underestimated, in part because of the difficulty in catching and studying the creature, which can grow to 8 feet long and 44 pounds. ("The eel" is also an improperly term technically, the electric variety is part of the shellfish family.)
The discovery results from an effort by Dr. de Santana and his colleaguesin conjunction with a broader network of researchers, to create a tree of life for South American electric fish, which the team hopes to use to study the evolutionary history of the region. From 2014 to 2017, the group went into the big amazon Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname – where they collected 107 live electric eels specimens, tested their blood pressure and extracted muscle samples for subsequent genetic analysis.
The team then examined the morphological, genetic and electrical differences between the specimens. Luiz Antonio Wanderley Peixoto, author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo, said that it was the first time that voltage was used to differentiate animal species.
Genetic analysis revealed that the specimens represented at least three distinct species. A striking physical difference between the three was in the form of their skulls. The head of E. electricus resembles the letter 'u', while that of E. voltai is more oval – a hair.
The biggest surprise came when the researchers measured each eel electric shock – a delicate process that involved placing a electrode on the head and tail of each animal. They measured an 860 volt discharge of E. voltai; Previously, the highest known discharge was 650 volts, which is four times the voltage of a standard US wall outlet. The amperage is too weak to cause serious damage to humans.
Electric eels have a specialized nervous system that synchronizes the activity of the cells producing electricity called electrocytes. An eel contains about 6,000 electrocytes, grouped into three organs called the main organ, Hunter organ, and Sachs organ, and can discharge them simultaneously to produce a powerful current. Angel Caputi, neuroscientist in computer science at the Institute of Biological Research of Uruguay, wrote that electrocytes align "like a series of piles stacked in a flashlight".
The eel uses this current to detect other fish, disrupt electrical signals near other fish and even paralyze the prey. It was once thought that electric eels were solitary animals, but de Santana and his team saw eels coordinate their predatory activities like lions on the hunt.
"This social behavior is quite unusual," said Naercio Aquino Menezes of the Zoology Museum of the University of São Paulo and principal investigator of the study. "They gather in a school, surround the fish they feed on, release electricity and kill it."
Dr. Menezes said the team was hoping to film a coordinated attack on the electric eel soon, which he says has never been filmed.
Dr. de Santana said the study could have applications for biotechnology research, perhaps as a model for the creation of medical implants. Scientists have long wondered about the eel's unique ability to transform its body into a battery. In 2017, researchers from the University of Friborg in Swiss designed an "eel-inspired" artificial organ that could eventually feed small medical devices, from pacemakers to prostheses.
"The interest in these fish goes beyond biodiversity," said Dr. de Santana. "They could inspire new technologies. It's one of the few fish in the world to really have magic. "
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