After learning about electric eels, I discovered lots of very weird facts about them. So, today, I am going to share them with you.

No. 1: Electric eels are like giant 650 volt batteries. Some have been able to charge 860 volts! (But only for two milliseconds). That’s enough to charge three televisions. Each tiny cell in its electricity producing organs creates 0.1 volt.

No. 2: Like I said, an electric eel is like a battery. Its head is the positive pole, and its tail is the negative. Also, only the front 25% is for containing vital organs, such as lungs, heart, etc. The back 75% is used to charge electricity, with three pairs of electric producing organs. This is how the eel charges its electricity.

No. 3: Did you know that an electric eel’s gills are very small? In fact, so small that they have to breath with their mouth! An electric eel’s gills are so tiny, that they can’t get enough oxygen without coming up every 10 minutes. Must be annoying to the eels, huh? Also, electric “eels” aren’t even eels! They are actually a fish related to the catfish.

Thank you for reading!

Lately, I have been researching about chimpanzees. One thing that fascinates me is how well they coordinate when they are hunting for Columbus monkeys – one of their favorite snacks.

When the hunt begins, a driver chimp comes up on the canopy to make push the monkeys forward. Then, multiple blockers come up on either side to make sure the monkeys don’t change direction. An assistant chaser may come up and help the driver run down the tiring Columbus monkeys. Finally, when the monkeys reach the right place, an already waiting chimpanzee, called an ambusher, leaps forward to grab a monkey. After that, the chimps split the prize. The hunters get the most, of course, and the rest of them share fairly.

BTW, this was written by EZ, the second oldest in our three sibling group (DZ is the eldest brother, and CZ is the young sister). Just a little about myself – I love biology and animals. So most of my next posts are going to be about animals that I have learned about.