According to foreign media CNET, wolves, dolphins, hyenas, humans, killer whales will hunt in teams, and now it is the turn of electric eels? Researchers studying the order Eel have discovered an unexpected behavior along the Iriri River in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. Scientists believe that these fish (they are not really eels) prefer to keep their mouths shut and do not start hunting until they have formed a team of up to 10.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Fish Research Assistant C. Smithsonian David de Santana, who is also the leader of the eel record research team, said in a statement on Thursday: "This is an extraordinary discovery. There has never been such a record of electric eels before. ”
It is understood that these are not ordinary electric eels. They are the Electrophorus voltai, a species that has only recently been discovered. They can grow up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) long and produce electric shocks of up to 860 volts, making them the strongest "biological generator" on Earth to date.
According to Santana, 10 such eels emit enough electricity to light up 100 light bulbs at the same time.
The research team published a paper on electric eels in Ecology and Evolution on Thursday. "Our initial hypothesis was that this was a relatively rare event that only occurred in shelters with large amounts of prey and large numbers of adult eels," Santana said.
The researchers plan to return to the place where the electric eels hunt to collect tissue samples, then place radio tags on some of the electric eels and measure the discharge of these electric eels. They want to learn more about how this animal communicates and organizes hunting.
The team also plans to collect some electric eels to observe their population dynamics in captivity. After all, scientists still have many mysteries waiting for them to solve. Santana said: "This paper is an example of how much we still don't know, how many organisms we don't yet know about the history of life. ”