Electric eels?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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This week’s column: Can we harvest electricity from electric eels? - The Straight Dope

I’ve been asked how do electric eels keep from shocking one another? And I have to admit, I have no clue. (What I don’t know about electric eels is a lot.)

Though I’m intrigued by the idea of lighting my Christmas tree with some, how many would it take for an average Christmas tree? Would it be more if you had a really busy light display?

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This might help.

…But eels live in water, which provides additional outlets for the current. They thus generate a larger voltage, but a divided, and therefore diminished, current. …*

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So when eels meet it’s a shocking experience? :smiley:

Thanks for the information, I truly did not know. The world is an amazing place sometimes.

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Personally, I’m just disappointed that when he mentioned other dangerous critters in the Amazon, he didn’t include a callback to the candiru.

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I didn’t really dig into the article but I’m getting the idea that to utilize electric eels for power generation we’ll need much bigger eels.

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“We got to get a bigger eel!” I like that.

So how many/how much would it take to power your average Christmas tree? Just curious.

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Electric eels are not like a battery or live wires that you accidentally touch and get shocked.

Imagine if, for self-protection, you had electrodes right in the palm of your right hand, and an on/off switch in your left pocket. How would you avoid shocking everyone you shook hands with? Easy, you just don’t hit the switch.

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Sounds like a job for genetic engineering. (And we might get a 1950s-style SF movie out of the deal, besides.)

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“The Eel That Lit Up Pittsburgh.” Or something similar.

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And from the same article:

That’s not eel: that’s tripe.

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Dangit, what’s with periodicals not putting dates on their web articles? I’ve known for a while now that Scientific American’s quality has been seriously declining, and wanted to see how recent that low-quality article was.

Having additional outlets for current would mean lower voltages and higher currents, not the other way around.

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This was pretty interesting. Big & Deadly ELECTRIC EELS - Amazon River Monsters - YouTube

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Never-mind all this rubbish!

All true Dopers want an answer to the real question in the back of our minds:

To make our Official Cecil Adams Electric Hovercraft go, how many eels must we fill it with?

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Obviously, it must be completely full.

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Click on “rights and permissions”:

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Melbourne, “large” currents vs. “diminished” currents is relative. Electric eels create a large current compared to other animals, who create microcurrents. Whereas the diminished current is with respect to the current generated dissipating outward in the water instead of discharging to one point of contact.

Chronos, I think what the article is saying is that the eel generates a large voltage, but the current is discharged from all around the body, so the eel doesn’t get a large jolt in one spot, but the prey or a predator would.