Electric eels revealed to have shocking powers of mind control

IT’S a stunning discovery: Electric eels don’t just “zap” their prey. They use their powers to remote-control them too.

Pet eel

IT’S a stunning discovery: Electric eels don’t just “zap” their prey. They use their powers to remote-control them, too.

The highly-charged predators have long been known to pack a 660-volt wallop.

But now researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Texas, has discovered the electric eel has true mental power.

A new study published in the journal Science reveals the eels can ‘remote control’ their prey.

It’s a handy trick.

Fish hiding nearby in the kelp will suddenly spasm, giving their presence away.

The startled subject of the eel’s attention will then find itself unable to swim away: It’s fins will simply refuse to respond.

The mastermind behind this superpower is Electrophorus electricus (known by South American locals as poraquê), which lives in and around the Amazon. It’s not really an eel, it’s more a fish. But more than 80 per cent of its elongated body is packed full of cells that are, in effect, biological batteries.

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Mind power ... Electric eels not only shock their prey, but use electric pulses to find them, expose them and immobilise them. Source: Catania

Secret sense

The electric eel is virtually blind, and they swim in murky waters. So they used their finely tuned electric senses to detect “echoes” from a pair of low-voltage pulses. Yes, like radar.

Dr Kenneth Catania, who led the study which observed the behaviour of the eels in captivity, says this “scan” can also tell the eel if the nearby prey is suitable food.

They then home in on their target, until they come within range.

Psychic attack

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, the eel sends out an 660 volt electric pulse (remember, the plug in your wall is 240 volts).

It used to be thought these ‘pulses’ simply stunned random prey.

“It’s amazing. The eel can totally inactivate its prey in just three milliseconds. The fish are completely paralysed,” Dr Catania says.

Now science knows more.

Experiments have shown that the eel has tuned its electric effect to trigger their prey’s nervous system. It hijacks the movement of every muscle in a fish’s body through mimicking the signals carried by its neural network.

This includes revealing the prey’s location (in the same way your arm would flex upward when touching a live wire), and smothering any reflex to run.

“If you take a step back and think about it, what the eel can do is extremely remarkable,” Dr Catania says. “It can use its electrical system to take remote control of its prey’s body. If a fish is hiding nearby, the eel can force it to twitch, giving away its location, and if the eel is ready to capture a fish, it can paralyse it so it can’t escape.”

Killer blow

Once the fish is immobilised, the eel moves in for the kill.

A volley of electric shocks is unleashed to send the fish into deep spasms before the eel sinks its teeth into the out-of-control flesh.

The study says that when the eel’s electric pulses slowed down as it tired, he observed fish twitching in time with each pulse. This revealed the eel was reaching in to the prey’s nervous system to control its muscles.

PICTURES: Fish to dive for