Or bad things will happen. Here’s an alligator trying to chomp on an electric eel — ouch.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Or bad things will happen. Here’s an alligator trying to chomp on an electric eel — ouch.
If it’s in the Amazon, it can’t be an alligator. It looks like a spectacled caiman to me. Alligators are only in China and the US (maybe in northeastern Mexico as well).
To me it looks like a caiman. Alligators do not live in the Amazon, so if it’s really there, then it’s almost certainly a caiman .
This (or a similar video) has come up below, with the same error about alligators / caiman, I think here at poopyhead’s, albeit I my Generalissimo Google-Fu is currently fubar and I can’t now find it…
That was a helluva thing. I enjoyed the click over to Miguel Wattson, too.
Gee, the folks on Naked & Afraid didn’t have that kind of problems when they killed electric eels. Maybe theirs had dead batteries.
Hoist by its own petard, as it were.
When one is being bitten by a strong-jawed beast it might not be the best strategy to produce a continuous spasm in the muscles being used to bite you.
But it’s not like electric eels have a long list of defensive options to pick and choose from. I am not here to bash electric eels. There are so many other more worthy targets out there.
Well the bloke is calling it a jacaré, and going by his accent we’re in Brazil (not that I have a great ear or anything, but that’s what it sounds like). So, caiman.
Also, wow.
Oh, oops, it actually says Amazon doesn’t it. OK, I’m embarrassed now.
What is the eel doing at the beginning of the video? Trying to get out of the water? Was it… going for the cameraman?! Is that caiman a hero?
It was also just recently discovered (like, in the news last week) that electric eels can almost double their charge just by curling( here’s one story on it). It’s a behavior that others in the knifefish don’t do. Hadn’t been really noticed before in lab experiments because they are fed small prey that aren’t very difficult; the researcher noticed it when he was trying to manipulate one and it curled up on his hand. Turns out that it puts the prey right between the poles, so to speak, and really ramps up the charge, and they do it to prey that are larger than them in the wild. It’s a beautiful case of seeing something weird and going “huh, what’s that for?” and following it to a cool conclusion.
oualawouzou – I think that the guy had caught it on a fishing line, and he was pulling it out of the water when the caiman went for it.
Jacare is a small caiman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacare_caiman
Also, Electric Eels have their anus pretty much behind their head: what we think as their body is actually just their tail, taking up most of their weight and containing the electric organs. http://whozoo.org/Intro2000/tashcorm/tempagetwo.htm
Hey, Snidely – Long time no see!
I had your thought as well before I even played the video: causing a spasmodic clampdown of the caiman’s jaws doesn’t actually seem like a great survival strategy. It seems like firing the charge slightly before the bite might have been a bit better (from the standpoint of instinct: in this case where you’re on a fishing line, you’re probably not going to survive anyway). Made me wonder about the defensive instincts of electric eels more generally.
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I love learning new things. I was sure it couldn’t be an alligator/ electric eel encounter (and that the “gator” must have been a caiman), but I had no idea that the yells of “Jacare”/”Yacare” were literally calling out that it was a caiman.
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@Caine:
I love me some bad puns: “current events”? Argh.
Almost makes me wish I was on twitter!
I understand the cameraman isn’t a documentarian, but I was unreasonably annoyed by him turning the camera to himself multiple times. Maybe I’m getting old, because I was literally mumbling to myself, “nobody cares about you in this situation guy, stop taking selfies and thrusting yourself into the the scene.”
@tkreacher, #14:
Just because the video went viral and you ended up seeing it, doesn’t mean that the videographer was thinking in this moment that this would be seen by anyone besides mom & the best friends.
Looks to me like the guy caught this eel and was setting the caiman up.
@starskeptic:
Caiman fishing: just bait your hook with an electric eel and you’ll be shockingly successful.
The idea of electric eels gives me the willies, but then I realized, of the four known forces, I am glad that eels use electric fields. Imagine gravity eels, or strong nuclear eels!
CD @17:
Ouch! That one stung!
It’s pretty dead, either way.
Echoing carlie @ 11 and starskeptic @16:
Man kills two animals. Everyone is excited.
I don’t mind eels
Except as meals
And the way they feels
–Ogden Nash, “Eels”
My oh my but that video looks fake. The shock lasts too long – I though electric eels worked like capacitors, not like generators! The animals don’t move the way I would expect, either before or after the supposed electric shocking begins. Also, I thought electric eels curved their bodies to bring their tails closer to whatever they are trying to shock, to increase the effect – that doesn’t happen in the video. I think a lot of people are getting suckered by this.
CD #17
Wait, are you saying that everything that I see isn’t specifically created for my personal viewing pleasure?
I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT!