How Does The Electric Eel Use Electricity?

Actually the electric eels use their electricity for feeding and for defence. When they want to catch the prey, they stun it using the electricity and it can easily catch the stunned prey. And about defence, when they come across their predators they would produce elecric current enough to hold them shocked for a considerable time in which it can easily escape out of danger.

Some electric eels and other fishes use electricity to detect objects in their nearby environment. Elephant snouts also produce electricity – these bottom dwelling fishes with long, downward pointing snouts (which is where they get their name from) produce a weak electric current.

When the swim around in very murky water, they can't see very well. So the electrical discharges that are produced by their muscles go into the water around them, creating a weak electric field all around the body. The elephant snout's brain picks up disturbances in the electric field and translates this into 'seeing' objects in the immediate surroundings.

In this way the eel and the elephant snout can detect approaching prey or potential predators that may be lurking close by. This requires a lot of brain space as the electricity receptors in the elephant snout are very large – giving it the largest brain of all of the lower vertebrate animals.