Can You Tell Me Something About The Nile Electric Eel?

The Nile electric eel is closely related to the elephant snout, another electricity producing fish but it looks very different. It is about 90 centimetres long when a grown adult and has a very long dorsal fin but no tail fin. It swims very gracefully by undulating its dorsal fin and can travel either backwards or forwards using the same technique.

Like the elephant snout, the Nile electric eel has special tail stalks that consist of muscle cells in a mass of clear, jelly like tissue. These organs send the electrical discharges produced by the muscles out into the water around the eel's body. This creates a sort of radar field around the fish and, like the elephant snout, the electric eel can detect the movement of other organisms in its immediate surroundings. The eel does not use electricity to stun its prey as some people think – it can't produce enough to have that sort of effect.