Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Eels!

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer/podcaster Katie Goldin (‘Creature Feature’ podcast, @ProBirdRights) for a look at why eels are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. (Alex's podcast hosting service requires a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, so that's why this episode's title has 1 exclamation point)

Eels. Known for being snaky. Famous for being electric-y. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why eels are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. One of my favorite guests and people is back on the show. Katie Golden is an incredible comedy writer and podcaster. I hope you're already a fan of Creature Feature. Creature Feature is her podcast.

It's over on iHeartRadio. If you like my podcast at all, even a little bit, even 0.001%, you're going to like Creature Feature. Check it out. Katie's also a fantastic comedy writer. She's behind the at ProBirdWrites Twitter account, and she's one of the writers for the Some More News channel on YouTube. Also, I've gathered all of our postal

codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca. I want to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. I also want to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. I also want to acknowledge that in North America and in many other locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And then my guest today, Katie Golden, she taped this show in the country of Italy. As I understand it, that location has a context outside of this. Today's episode is about eels,

and eels is a patron-suggested topic. There's sort of a special reason I picked this and wanted to make it. In the patron-suggestion threads, a lot of times people give extra context on why they're suggesting something. And patron Shane, Shane is one of many, you know, long-running patrons who suggest stuff many months. And he said that particular month, it had been his birthday and he had gotten engaged to be married. And so he said, you know, just wouldn't it be fun if also this was the month where my suggestion got over the top because my dream suggestion is eels. Anyway, Shane's story really jumped out to me. I think the biggest reason is that, you know, he got engaged recently. Shane, congratulations. Shane's partner, congratulations. And then this month when this comes out, I am getting married myself. I'm pretty sure I've said I'm getting married on the show. And that's this month. It's very soon. And so, you know, with that on my mind, I thought it would be sweet. And so, Shane, happy engagement. Congratulations. Your very

good suggestion is this week's topic. Please sit back or the rest of you folks hop in the comments at SifPod.fun. Wish Shane a happy engagement. It would be fun if we all did that. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Katie Golden. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Katie Golden, what an exciting time. We've got an amazing topic here. What is your relationship to or opinion of eels? Eels. I love eels. Eels. I'm excited about eels. I like eels.

I think they're really fascinating. Oh, phew. Good. That works out for me. It's no secret for me that they're fascinating. I'll tell you that much. Yeah, they are really interesting. There's so many.

I mean, like, they are just on the surface like weird and cool they're fish linguine it's amazing they're also just like have a lot of I'm sure we're going to talk about it I don't want to jump the gun on this are we going to talk about garden eels at all

because I think they're my favorites oh I don't have anything about them okay cool so garden eels are a type of eel that are, they're very cute. They're just like these little noodles. They're pretty skinny and they only grow about, I don't know, like a foot long. So they're little guys and they burrow in the sand and they're very, very shy. They basically stay in their burrows almost all the time except for mating. shy. They basically stay in their burrows almost all the time except for mating. And they are an exhibit at the Tokyo, at this Tokyo Aquarium. And during the pandemic, they were worried that these

eels would get too shy around humans because they, like with the absence of visitors they started to become more shy seeing human faces but they need to not be so shy because if they are if they don't recognize human faces and they're afraid of them it makes it harder for the aquarium keepers to you know interact with them give them the care that they need so they put up a facetime uh ipads all around the aquarium to get these eels acclimated to human faces so that they wouldn't get too shy during the pandemic. So if you felt like you were living a Zoom lifestyle during the pandemic, so were these little garden eels. And they're also very cute. So that's one of my favorite eel facts. I relate to these eels so strongly.

I've seen so many of my friends and favorite people through Zooms for a while now. So yeah, I get it. That's life. Zoom is what kept us from becoming face shy during the pandemic. So like after the pandemic, whenever we saw a human face, we didn't just go like, ah, and then hide in our burrows like the garden eel. I've been latching on to people with my jaws. Is that wrong? Is that the wrong way to go?

I'm going to say no, but I socialize mostly with eels, so I take that advice for what it is. That's great like man garden eels i it turns out for one thing i am phobic of many sea creatures but eels not so much i'm pretty good with them and i think you don't like jellyfish do you yeah massively still afraid of them even though we learned about them but i eels i I think they just have land animal logic. They just remind me of snakes. And in my head, there was basically eels that are snakes but water, and then electric eels because I've heard of them in cartoons. That was what I knew mostly going in.

It turns out a lot more going on. It's great. Yeah, there's a bit more going on there. And as we'll say, hundreds and hundreds of eel species. So hello, garden eels nice to know you another one yeah i think there's there's like over again i don't want to like uh get too far ahead but there's over like 800 eel species yeah that's a number yeah it's almost too many yeah almost too many but not quite i mean if there was like 801, I'd be like, all right, guys, calm down there.

Calm down there, you little sea spaghettis. I don't know why I turned into a cowboy trying to wrangle eels for a second there. Calm down there, sea spaghettis. But it happened. It's true spaghetti western stuff, right? Like your Italian situation has combined the old West with Italy. And is that what spaghetti Westerns are? Cause I've never been clear on the concept. Yes. It, uh, it was a bunch of movie productions, some of them Italian run,

some of them American run, but it was shooting a bunch of old West cowboy stories in Italy. Yeah. That's why they call that. Okay. I see. That's interesting. See, I live in Italy and I didn't even know that. So I just thought maybe spaghetti Westerns were because like when they walk, their legs are going side to side all jiggly, like a spaghetti. I don't know. Oh yeah. Honestly, I thought it was like complicated stories was what that meant before I found out they just filmed it in it and stereotyped Italian people in the name. Or like when they have their duel, it's them eating plates of spaghetti and whoever finishes the spaghetti first wins. Yeah.

And then the loser like falls down dead. Well, with those numbers, I think we can knock one number off the total because before we do stats and numbers, I want to do one big takeaway so we know what we're talking about. That brings us into takeaway number one. Electric eels are extremely electric and are not technically eels. Yes, they're actually a type of knifefish, not a species of eel. Yeah, I had never heard of bony knifefish. And it turns out they're a separate thing. And we just call them eels, and this episode includes electric eel stuff, because they're so famous, and especially the bonus is all about electric eels.

But they're not technically in this category, if you're taxonomically specific about it. Right, and I love that the bony knifefish have such a Dick Tracy villain name. Eh, it's me, the bony knifefish. And then like a Dick Tracy villain superpower, which is, you know, an electric field. But yeah, no, I mean, it is interesting because they look very much like eels,

but they evolved that body shape independently from eels as did a number of other uh fish species yeah it must it must just be a handy shape to be in water or land because they're also totally unrelated to snakes which are reptiles and then you know there are amphibians that sort of look like these sometimes, but it's just like, yeah, being long and noodley seems to be real adaptive all over the earth. Noodle is the way to go. In fact, there are legless lizards who look very snake-like, but who are not snakes. So the, the noodle type of body has evolved independently in many different types of animals. So that's really cool. Yeah, and I love to finding this out.

It turns out, if I had had to guess going in, I would have guessed that electric eels are eels, but also the electricity is kind of made up or overblown. But no, they're very electric, very powerful. That's right, yeah. And that's amazing. I mean, there are a lot of animals that use like electric fields, electroreception. And yeah, the fact that electric eels can actually kind of weaponize their electric field is pretty amazing. Big time. Yeah. And key sources here are the U.S. National Aquarium in Baltimore, also a piece for CNET by Amanda Kuser, and a piece for The Atlantic by Ed Young, the great Ed Young.

I love Ed Young. He's the best. He's a great guy. Also, Eels, Eels, Eels Monthly, a subscription-based magazine that is for the eel enthusiast among us. Now I do want neon of eels, eels, eels on a big sign somewhere. Eels, eels, eels. Electric eels, this is an animal species. It's found specifically in South America, it turns out, in the Amazon River Basin and the Orinoco River Basin,

usually in any slow-moving water, like little creeks or swamps, muddy places. And yeah, they're from the bony knifefish family. And that also explains why there's only one quote unquote eel that's electric, because it turns out most of the bony knifefish family, they generate weak electrical fields, usually for navigation or for communication with each other. And then electric eels just do that in a massive way. But the regular eels, the true eels, they tend not to generate these electrical fields so much. So there's the difference. And that's what's so special about the electric, quote unquote, eel, the electric knifefish,

is that there are animals that can generate these weak electric fields as a method of like basically perception like how bats will use echolocation they'll like send out a sound and then it'll bounce back and hit them there are a lot of animals that live in like silty environments like platypuses the elephant nose fish can generate this weak electric field because they live in these kind of like silty environments. And things like the platypus will actually detect the electrical fields coming off of like prey, like worms or things. But then the elephant fish takes it a step earlier, produces this weak electric field. And then when things disrupt the electric field, it senses that. And so it's able to navigate even when it's swimming in like a silty environment. But then the electric, quote unquote, eel, which is the knifefish, it's like it's creating such

a strong electric field that can actually shock things in its environment. Yeah, they just really, really, really developed this ability that it turns out, like you say, is common in a low level, just sensing what's around you way. And then electric eels, it turns out, can produce a charge of up to 600 volts, which is enough to incapacitate an adult human or incapacitate a horse. Like it's, it's astounding. I sort of assumed it would be like, like cartoon skunks. Like when Pepe Le Pew makes a smell, it's different from real skunks,

where it's just it and that's it. You know, like it's, it's, I thought this was a cartoon ability that was sort of made up sort of real, but it's super real. They do it very aggressively if they want to. Yeah. And I don't think it can, can, in its natural environment, I don't think it can kill a human, but it can certainly be extremely painful and produce numbness. But it can definitely like stun or kill the prey items that it is after. Big time, yeah. Yeah, it turns out they mainly like to stun stuff and then eat it with their mouths, but they can just kill it if they want to. They also they're even kind of just a big battery, like just an electricity generator. is just the vital organs and the other necessary parts. And then the other 80% is organs for generating electricity. Like most of their physical size and space is for making shocks.

They love it. I mean, anyone who is a fan of electric cars knows that this is the issue where like most of the car is just like where you put the big battery for the car. It's the same thing for the electric eel like i he's not a guy i'm a fan of but elon musk right come on folks come on just make sense man it would be i feel like it would be cooler if elon musk were the actual guy and the cars were powered by a bunch of eels. That would be like an evil billionaire I could get behind personally. But yeah, they have like these little organs that are these like tiny organic batteries. And then when you like stack all of them together,

like you described it takes up this big volume of a body of its body it can produce this surprisingly huge amount of charge yeah yeah it's just it doesn't make sense basically but it's a thing and they yeah and they're so committed to electricity, like the U.S. National Aquarium says they essentially have no natural predators. Like there are animals that would like to eat an eel shaped thing, but just they don't want to get attacked by this primarily defensive and hunting electricity ability. Like the eel will fight back by just shocking whatever's after it. They're really screwed if any of these predators discover like insulated rubber gloves or something.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the other thing going on, maybe they could get around it because recently there's been observation of electric eels ganging up on things that they want to hunt. Wow. This is it was a 2021 study led by Smithsonian researcher Carlos David de Santana, who, observing electric eels in South America, saw them hunting in cooperative groups of up to 10 members.

And so they surrounded a population of tetras, which are little river fishes, and then jointly stunned them with their combined voltage. So that's going on, too. Wow. That's really interesting. That's fascinating because, yeah, I mean, you think of like dolphins, they hunt together and you have this like group hunting behavior.

But to see that in something like a knifefish, you know, this much, much more simple fish where most of its body is not brain, but electricity producing organs, and then having them work together in this coordinated attack. That's, I mean, it's, I'm gonna say it's a little threatening. It's a little intimidating. Yeah, it's like, like, I'm happy for them, I guess, but I don't love knowing that that's out there now. So that's cool. You approve of this violence? Yeah. I guess the good news is I don't have plans to be in the Amazon River anytime soon. So that's fine for me, personally. It's all about this guy. I feel like the Amazon River, it's like there are a lot of things that live in the Amazon that are surprisingly sort of, I guess, like dastardly, like the river otters where it's like, oh, a little river otter.

And then you look at one of these giant river otters that live in the Amazon. It's like, oh, damn, that thing could like eat my face off. And it often does like kill and eat Kaiman. So it's like, oh, you're so cute. And then it's like, I'm going to get like bring in my whole I'm going to bring in the whole party and cause a mass electrocution. And it's like, oh, OK, that's cool. Amazon, maybe we shouldn't like keep going to war with the Amazon. Just saying, you know.

Yeah. And like such deadly fish there. Like I feel like the first thing I learned about the Amazon was piranhas. Like, oh, watch out for piranhas. They can skeletonize a cow is the thing the farsight taught me. And then it's also just a crazy metric for anything. And then you're like, well, I'll keep learning about this river. And it's like, well, there's a few pink dolphins and then everything else is murder. Everything else

is just death and out to get you. I mean, even the dolphins, I think, um, they definitely do murder some things like fish, but yeah, I mean, yeah, I feel like we should just like take these things as hints that there are fish that will electrocute things and kind of, I don't know, take get the message. Or, I mean, maybe we should like people who are threatening the Amazon, like Bolsonaro, just like throw a bunch of electric eels in his bathtub and be like, you know what? This is what you're messing with, man. Maybe that does explain why Bolsonaro has been willing to get COVID like a hundred thousand times is that the whole rest of his life is so dangerous. Yeah. You know, right. Right. I'm saying we should arm the giant river otters. I mean, they're already very dangerous,

but if we arm them, uh, I think that might turn, turn the tides a little bit, so to speak. That's right. We're going to right we're gonna we're gonna flip the current or whatever yeah yeah but these uh these animals the the bonus show is is all about them the rest of the way but like we said uh the there's an immediate number coming of about 800 true eels is what they're called and we're going to get into them for the whole rest of the main show on every episode one of our fascinating things usually the first thing is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and this week that's in a segment called hey katie let's do some stats bum bum bum take some numbers and count them better

remember to step them into your heart and math can start to make things numbered i'll never let math into my heart. Never. That's true. The heart is already doing a lot of counting. I don't want to distract it from the one, two it's got going on. You know what I mean? Let's stick to that. Yeah.

If my heart tried to do like a Fibonacci sequence, I think I'd be dead. Yeah. Yeah. No learning jazz, heart. Stayed on the beat. Four on the floor. That would be a cute thing, though. If you have an arrhythmia, just be like,

I got a jazzy heart. It's actually very dangerous. Yep. That name was submitted by Adam Miller. Thank you, Adam. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Miss Cillian wacky and bad as possible. Submit to Sip Pot on Twitter or to Sip Pot at gmail.com. As we said, first number is about 800,

and specifically that's the number of species in the taxonomic order anguilliformes. Yes. Any Latin, I'm a little bit making up the pronunciation, but anguilliforms. I am too, honestly. I don't know. I said that very authoritatively where it's like, yes, that's what they are.

I don't know how this stuff is pronounced between you and me. I don't know. It's a dead language. We just did a whole Lorem Ipsum episode about like, who knows, you know, like forget it. It's dead and we'll kill it deader with our pronunciations. Yeah. I want the ancient Romans listening to the Eels show to be so mad at me. I love it.

I love it. Bring it on. And anguilliformes is an order within the animal kingdom. They're all fish. And the electric eels are in a different order called gymnotiformes. And so, yeah, ankyliforms, there's lots of suborders and special categories of it, but that's all the true eels. And they live worldwide, huge range in pretty much all the oceans and rivers. You can find some kind of eel somewhere. Yeah, yeah. They're amazingly diverse.

Yeah. There's an enormous set of types of them. We won't cover nearly all of them, but I've got some stories picked out about specific types, in particular the European eel will come up on this episode. Oh, yeah. I'm excited. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Some of them are teeny tiny, like about the size of your pinky as adults. And then some are huge, like over seven feet long and super heavy. And there are ones that have cute little Muppet faces. Some of them look like, what are those? The little aliens from Sesame Street. And some of them have horrifying monster faces. But then they're actually super chill. It's amazing how diverse a noodle can be as I've learned living in Italy.

Speaking of European eels, am I right? The pasta. Yeah. Segway. well and next number here and then the next number here is a broad eels thing it is one and one is the number of fins that most eel species have according to pbs eels it looks like a set but they really have one continuous dorsal anal and caudal fin that runs top to bottom around the tail tip, just one fin for the whole body for most eels. Yeah. And like this ribbon and they move through undulating their whole body. I mean, in a similar way that snakes move, but obviously the physics are different because they're swimming through the water, whereas snakes are moving on land. Yeah. And

this really helped me understand both those kinds of animals. Cause yeah, I didn't realize that it's just a wave of motion. I always just never thought about it too much, like how any of those move. And I'm not even that afraid of them. I was just like, I don't know. It's, it's pasta animal stuff. Fine. But, but an eel generates a wave of motion by move, like you say, moving its whole body with that one fin doing the one move. It's really interesting with eels and for snakes, for any of these animals that move in these kind of undulating motions, is it's this sort of cascade of muscle contractions that, if you think about it, it has to be very precise in order for that movement to work. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's very beautiful. I think. One other thing with the

eel fin and the eel movement, PBS says a lot of eels can swim backwards very easily because they just reverse the wave, which is wild. They just put it in reverse. Really cool. They're like a car. Which is wild. They just put it in reverse. Really cool. They're like a car. Amazing. Again, eel powered cars, I would support. As long as the, you know what?

I'm going to backpedal a little bit. As long as the eels are having a good time, right? Like if we do eel powered cars, but it's like torturing the eels. No, I'm not into that. If we have like, if it's more, if it's like a Flintstone situation, but with electric eels and they're like, it's a living, you know, maybe I'd be into that. And the next number here, also anatomical, this is specific about moray eels, which is a type I had heard of before this. But the number is two. And two is the number of sets of jaws possessed by a moray eel.

We're going to have some wild diagrams to link for people. I had no idea. When the jaws hits your eyes and it's a big surprise, that's a moray. Yeah. I'm excited for this. I love mores and I love their secret alien jaws. Yeah, right. True xenomorph stuff.

And Smithsonian Smart News is one of the sources for this. Apparently, moray eels are they're a well-known aquatic predator. I had heard of them for like lying in wait. It turns out they use their smell in the water mainly to detect stuff and then they'll ambush it like i'd heard of them yeah yeah their eyesight isn't great but their sense of smell is great and then they have surprise jaws that'll that'll get you yeah and it also turns out they like to not only hunt in the water but but they're known to rig along to land and then catch stuff like crabs and drag it back into the water, which is a whole other category of just amazing behavior.

But according to a 2021 study by UC Santa Cruz evolutionary biologist Rita Mehta, we now have pretty solid observation of this behavior. They offered squid to moray eels that they had to come out of the water to get. And what morays can do, and has been observed very clearly now, is they will grab food with their visible, standard-looking jaws. Because if you look at a moray eel, it just looks like it has a snout and a mouth, like snakes and whatever else. But then what they'll do is they'll grab it

with their main jaws and then suddenly slingshot the food deeper into their throat with an extendable secondary set of jaws that like rests inside their throat and is not visible unless you see them eating this way yeah and those are called the pharyngeal jaws. Exactly. And they, yeah, they work exactly like xenomorph, that little, little extra set and they can shoot them out, uh, with their, with their muscles and like pull them back in like a retractable arm, but it's jaws. It's great. Yeah. That's just going on.

And apparently it's most useful for this land hunting because underwater there's a lot of suction that helps. And, you know, they can use it there, too. But they are they are just so deeply committed to, like, snatching stuff. They love it. They're really optimized for it. Yeah. And if you're trying to visualize Amore and you like the movie The Little Mermaid, Flotsam and Jetsam are Amores. The Ursula's sidekicks.

Yeah, the henchmen. And I mean, I think amores are super cute in real life. I mean, they're menacing looking and they've got these big crooked, like they look kind of like they've got an evil smile, but you know, they're just chilling and they'll like open. If you see them at aquariums, you can see that they open and close their mouths sometimes.'re they're just chilling and they'll like open if you see them at aquariums you can see that they open and close their mouths sometimes like they're just yawning every few minutes and that's to help push water through their gills and so i don't know i think they're cute and apparently they're um pretty mild-mannered around humans uh of course like with any wild animal you can always get bitten so don't like mess around with them.

But according to divers, like they generally don't have a problem with them as long as they leave them alone. In the little mermaid, they may actually be sort of the same role as like wolves where we maybe select like mermaids, I would assume, would selectively breed eels so that they would have like golden retriever eels eventually. And then they can fetch with two sets of jaws. Adorable. I'm thinking of the garden eels in the aquarium now where they want to see faces. Like that's so dog-like. Ma'am. They're so cute.

You got to Google garden eel and just look at their doofy little face. They just look like sad spaghetti with eyeballs. That's good to know that moray eels like aren't necessarily trying to bite us all the time because like. No. I'd never thought about the experience of like you get bit by an animal and then it bites you again without without letting go the first time you know what i mean what yeah come on that wouldn't be that wouldn't be super fun again i would not like i would not touch a moray like if you're a scuba diver i wouldn't go up to a moray and like poke it because then it might bite you on accident and if it feels threatened it might bite you on accident. And if it feels threatened, it might bite you. But if you don't bother them, generally speaking, I don't think they, they, they don't want to like bother you.

You are not this right size for them to think like, oh, that's prey. They're probably just more just like curious. Like what is this weird non-noodle thing doing here? Oh yeah. Yeah. I could see like an exploratory nibble, you know, or something. That makes sense. here oh yeah yeah i could see like an exploratory nibble you know or something that makes sense but yeah and if you kiss them you get two kisses don't do that don't do that you'll you'll get your lips eaten what if like in more eels i know they don't kiss each other like people but like in more eel society it's like oh is he a good kisser it It's like first stage, yes. Second stage, no. Or like there's different grades for the different. His pharyngeal kiss is just not, it's not it, babe. No.

And next number here, and Katie, you sent this to me before taping. Good, just based on the topic. I'm thrilled about it. Next number is over 675,000. And over 675,000, that's the follower count he has of this taping for the TikTok user at Cow Turtle. And I know Cow Turtle sounds like it'll be a cow account or a turtle account. But his real name is Nick Tobler and his nickname is the Eel Daddy. Eel Daddy!

Because he has become a hit TikToker by building an eel pit in his basement and caring for it and showing it off. Haven't you ever just wanted to flood your basement and fill it with eels? Constantly. I wish I had a basement. I don't have a basement, so I can't flood my basement and fill it with eels. But it's been like a lifelong dream of mine to flood my basement and become an eel husbandrist an eel aquarist an eel questrian i don't really know what you call someone that's when you ride a big one yeah yeah yeah a big one i mean there are some meals that are

pretty big like pool noodle size so i feel like it could rhyme one i mean if it lit you without biting your arm off but yeah yeah uh i love this i i mean it seemed like there's pro i mean this is probably gonna get milkshake ducked where it's like there's something wrong with keeping eels in your basement blah blah blah but right come on it's eels in a basement. It's great. I love it. Rolling Stone did all right above it. Apparently, the combination of the eels and his handsomeness has developed a real fandom. And I feel like it's really the combination of the two, right? Like, you don't expect a handsome dude to be like, welcome to my eel basement.

Like, you just expect them to be, I don't know, lifting weights or something upstairs. I feel like eel basement is third or fourth date kind of activity. Like you don't want to, you don't want to like immediately invite someone back to your place to see your eel basement. You need to establish sort of trust with that person well in advance before introducing them to your eel basement. And if you are on a date and you're like, you want to come back home to see my eel basement, they are not going to think it's actually an eel basement. No. Yeah.

No, that sends a very different message than you probably want. I think you even need to ease people into, do you want to come see my basement? Just like the regular basement. Like, I don't know. I actually think that an eel basement is less threatening than just like asking someone if they want to see your basement. Cause that, like saying you want to come see my basement, it's like, why? What's in a basement? Are you going to murder me? But if it's like, I keep a bunch of eels in my basement. Now that's basement are you gonna murder me but if it's like i keep a bunch of eels in my basement now that's a reason to see the basement that doesn't have to do with murder necessarily that's right it's it's so specific and so weird it makes the basement sound safe actually yeah it sounds right right

it's like who would lie about that you can't you can't it's also like who would have the time to be a murderer and keep a bunch of eels healthy? You know how hard it is to be an aquarist? You always got to keep the pH right. You got to make sure their stress code is cool, like that they have healthy mucus. You got to feed them. You got to clean them. You got to make sure the filter is working. You got to make sure that it's oxygenated enough. It is hard keeping an aquarium, let alone an eel basement. So I don't think this guy has time to murder people. It's a hard path to take, the eel road of caring for.

Again, I don't necessarily encourage people to keep exotic pets. I think that cats, dogs, goldfish even are, you know, like there's a reason they're the most popular pets and that's because they work well with us. So I really can't speak to the wisdom of keeping eels as pets. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not ideal, but I also, I just love the idea of an eel basement so much. I'm willing to overlook that for now. Yeah. Well, and we're not the ones doing it, but Rolling Stone says that many of the comments on the posts are thirsting after Mr. Tobler here

and referring to him as an eel daddy. He also says, quote, a lot of pretty girls are DMing me. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. You know what? Like, if you're if you have are passionate about a hobby, that's one of the most attractive things is to be confident in your own hobbies, even if it's an eel basement. Yeah. He also this this article has some of my favorite quotes from a person in a long time.

Here's him describing a situation, quote, right now it's a cave. Down the road, I might turn it into a swamp. There are endless possibilities for me. Is this guy Shrek? Is this just Shrek? Did I just get Shrek'd? I should have probably looked this up too, but like what species of eels are these?

You know, it was not clear. I should have probably looked this up too, but like what species of eels are these? You know, it was not clear. And it does seem like a lot of eels, especially we're about to talk about eel farming, but like a lot of eels can be kept in kind of a contained space where you're feeding them and they're breeding a lot. You know, like it seems like it's a species that can tolerate this. So that's fine. But it's just pet. Like, he's not farming them.

These are just his pets, right? Yeah. Yeah. He's not, like, shipping them out for food or anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So he's just like an eel enthusiast. He's profiting off these eels, I guess, through social media.

But who would have thought that could happen yeah yeah it's one of those pets where it's like if you want to have eels as a pet you better be ready for like potentially the most eels like they breed pretty effectively and you know it's not it's not like you get one dog and you have one dog, you know. I'm going to cross stitch that. It's such a it is such a it's a meaningful aphorism. It's such sage wisdom. If you have eels as pets, you better be ready for the most eels. It's true, isn't it?

It's applicable to so many different situations, too. Yeah. The other side of the pillow could be the end of his quote, like, there are endless possibilities for you, you know? Like, wow, thank you. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne.

I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And remember, no running in the halls. And with eel farming, next number here is about 70%. 7-0, about 70%.

That is how much of the world's eel fishing catch gets consumed in Japan. Wow. Eels are a global food. They're eaten in many places. There's also like a clear number one country for this. And Japanese people eat about 130 tons of eel per year. Wow, yeah. I thought they were fairly popular in England as well, right? Or is that not the case anymore? Yeah, well, I'll link a article from Gastro Obscura because it kind of has to be seen. But there is a British dish called jellied eels. Yeah, that's probably what I'm thinking about.

It's developed in the east end of London in the 1700s. And you make it by, you take a bunch of eels, chop them up, and then boil them in vinegar. And you can season them too, but the vinegar boil basically turns them into a gelatinous pile. And then that's a cheap, nutritious meal in Britain. I try really hard not to be judgmental of like other cultures and eating habits, because who am I to judge? You know what I mean? But what the hell are the English doing?

Like at any time, they're like, I'm going to take a horse scrotum and stuff it full of pigeons. And I'm going to call it herbals and bums. And I'm going to eat it with my tea. And I don't know what's happening with you guys. Is it because of the weather being bad all the time that it just kind of scrambles your brain and then you feel the need to do these things? I just I'm I'm concerned, you know, I do. I wish this recipe was the British thing where they name it after one Lord from one time. And then all of history thinks that Lord is weird.

You know, like why is the Earl of Sandwich so into bread and putting stuff between it? What a specific guy. I feel like, I don't know that people judge the Earl of Sandwich negatively because everyone loves sandwiches. People judge the Earl of Sandwich negatively because everyone loves sandwiches. But if there was like a lord that came up with jellied eels, I think that they potentially should be judged. And I'm sorry for judging you, England, on your jellied eels, but also like, can you really blame me? And what are you doing? Yeah. When you name stuff like jellied eels and blood pudding and so on, the rest of us are like,

we have an initial reaction. What are we going to do? Yeah. Yeah. And I've never eaten eel. Have you ever eaten eel at all? It's never been offered to me. I have. I don't care for the texture too much. I think I've had it in like more of a like sushi based kind of context. So probably more like it wasn't it wasn't bad. It was just like maybe a little chewy. But then again, I don't really love shrimp that much. And so I think that there and I also don't love calamari. I don't like octopus and I don't like, I mean, I don't like mollusks in general. So I think that eel has that kind of a little bit of that rubbery texture that I don't like. Makes sense, yeah. Yeah. I'm personally not too much of a fan. I'm not, I don't, I can imagine it being good though.

I cannot imagine jellied eel being good. That is, that's a step too far for me. Yeah. I think I'm much more into the Japanese preparation that's described here. Uh, the, the sources, the Atlantic, they say that the eels are usually eaten young and that's called unagi. And then the main serving is eels over a bed of rice, just cooked and on right, which sounds great. I'm into it. Yeah. And so there's all kinds of places in Japan where people are like actively farming eels, like people farm a lot of fish and other seafood. The Atlantic, they talk about the town of Hamamatsu, where apparently in 1498, there was an earthquake that broke up a land barrier between a lake and the sea. And eels are a species that often like spawns in the ocean and lives in freshwater. And

so that became one of Japan's perfect like eel farming habitats was this lake that connects to the sea. And the other number with Japan is over 30%. 3-0, over 30%. That is how much of Japanese eel consumption happens on one holiday. Wow. It turns out it's a year-round food, and then also there is a peak of the summer holiday called the Day of the Ox, and the nutrient-rich unagi is supposed to help fight heat exhaustion. Oh, interesting. It's a meal all the time and also a traditional meal for this summer Japanese holiday. the nutrient-rich unagi is supposed to help fight heat exhaustion. Oh, interesting.

It's a meal all the time and also a traditional meal for this summer Japanese holiday. I see. That's interesting. Yeah. Sort of like it's the day of reckoning for eels as Thanksgiving is the day of reckoning for turkeys in the U.S. That's exactly what I thought of. Yeah. Yeah, apparently the eel supply chain has to be tilted toward a huge day, sort of like our turkey supply chain. Because you can just get a turkey sandwich, but then people are like eating an entire

one all of a sudden during November. I just feel like, yeah, turkey is not, it's not, even though I personally don't care for eel, maybe it's like it is better in certain respects to like just turkey seems like a bad meat like it's so dry uh i mean i'm a nut i love turkey and everyone disagrees with me yeah i feel like if it's not it's just so hard to get it to be uh not not super dry i guess i don't know i don't know what i'm saying maybe if we genetically combine the eel and the turkey, we'll finally come upon a universally beloved food. Just so much gobbling under the water.

Like instead of the Jaws music when that fin is coming, just like gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. And then. Gobble, gobble. And then. And there's one last number here, and that brings us into the one other takeaway for the main episode. And the number is 4,000 miles. 4,000 miles or over 6,400 kilometers.

And that is the distance that a European eel migrates as a baby. Yes. I'm so excited for this. This is all European eel stuff the rest of the way. And the key source is a fantastic book. It's called The Book of Eels, Our Endless Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World. It's by Swedish journalist Patrick Svensson, translated by Agnes Bruma, and really well titled.

It's what you think. It's a book about eels. Yeah. I have to ask Alex whether there's a familial connection here, because I know who this marine biologist is, and I am very suspicious. So that was a thrilling surprise. Folks, the key scientist that's going to break all this open is named Johannes Schmitz. And he's Danish and probably not related to me because my Schmitz are German. But still, pretty cool.

Look, there's a lot of traveling that Europeans do to different countries. So you never know. It's next to Germany. And on the recent surnames episode, we talked about how Schmitz is the German and I guess Danish word for Smith, like a blacksmith. And so it's a mega common name. But also, I don't know, maybe I'm related. Yeah, you could be an eel, Schmidt. Just making it like a sword, but you're making an eel out of an anvil.

Ow, ow, ow. It'd be so squishy, the sounds oh yeah but and yeah this all brings us into the other main takeaway takeaway number two in europe the life cycle of eels was a major scientific mystery for thousands of years yes it turns out like yes the entire history of natural science and biology in europe one of the biggest questions around was how do eels reproduce and breed and grow everyone wanted to know this yes yeah it was it was a huge mystery and like for and like famous figures like singman singman freud was curious about this mystery too it was it was a big thing it was like a big thing exactly and i also i i did not know really anything about the european eel and to to europe's credit it turns out this was hard to understand because the european eel has a pretty complex and amazing

life cycle. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it makes sense that it was hard. Yeah, because like one of the biggest mysteries is they couldn't find like the gonads of the eel. They would like look at these eels and they didn't find gonads on them. And they're like, how do these reproduce if they don't have any gonads, if they don't have any gonads if they don't have the sex organs they need to reproduce yeah which is a fair question and then people came up with crazy answers until they knew and that uh that number about a 4 000 mile migration that's because i i really didn't know eels work this way. Like as we were saying, they will like spawn in saltwater and breed in saltwater and then live in freshwater,

especially rivers. What they do is they do a humongously massive migration. They are spawned in the Sargasso Sea, which is a patch of the North Atlantic, really closer to North America than Europe. And they start out in the first stage as larvae. It's just these tiny, wispy bodies. And then... Yeah, they look like amoebas almost. Yeah, basically like nothing compared to an adult eel. Like it's just stuff floating in the water.

And it's funny because the Sargasso Sea actually, like, there's a little corner of it that is shared with their Bermuda triangle. So it's like these mystery eels sprout from their Bermuda triangle. I think there was a TikTok several months ago that was like saying that eels like are created in the Bermuda triangle and nobody knows how, which is not quite true as Alex is about to explain, but they do, they they that area of the sargasso sea where they do mate it's like it's next it's like it shares a little bit of uh space with the bermuda triangle so that's you know that's fun i'm so glad you heard about that tiktok in the exact way

it's not quite true yeah yeah because we have not really observed this spawning in the sargasso sea because it's way down there and partly bermuda triangle but we have the ocean observed this spawning in the sargasso sea because it's way down there and partly bermuda triangle but we have the ocean's so big it's really hard to find stuff in it like i feel like we have this idea of like we can science can find everything because we've got boats we've got instruments but guys the ocean is like super big. It's super big and it's really hard to find stuff in it. And a lot of behaviors we're just not going to see because we're not there and we can't just like magically get there in time to see these behaviors. That's right. And then that TikTok basically said we have no idea how eels reproduce.

But like everything we're about to say is stuff we know. And like, we've seen it in labs and aquariums and stuff like we are. It's pretty similar to most fish is the shortest, shortest answer, but there's a whole life cycle to it too. Yeah. We know,

we know how eels mate, for instance, hypothetically, if someone didn't know what would happen, like a, like a young, a young eel, like, yeah, we all know, like a little teenager eel. Yeah, I know how this works. But like, just for those of us who don't know. Also, I've done a lot of kissing.

Both jaws, too. Both jaws. I'm really cool. Everybody wants to be cool so the so the eel starts as these tiny amoeba like larvae apparently they mostly drift and then begin to grow and swim in order to go east all the way to europe but that involves growing into a second stage called the glass eel which is a couple inches long, basically transparent, which is why it's a glass eel. But this very tiny little glass eel swims from the ocean near North America to streams in Europe, which is amazing.

And then once it's in the streams, it develops into a bigger pigmented scaly eel that's a yellowish-brown color. These are called yellow eels. That's the third stage. And then they live that way up to 50 years, but usually less. And then at some point, this yellow eel decides it wants to reproduce. And from there, it becomes even bigger. It becomes gray-colored, maybe even about two feet long.

They flood their own bodies with a steroid hormone, and all of that powers a giant ocean track 4,000 miles back to the Sargasso Sea. And these are called silver eels. They spawn and mate there, and then usually die shortly after. But so it makes sense to me that these four very different life stages where it looks totally different and does totally different stuff, europeans for thousands of years said those are a bunch of different species and i don't know how they made or what they have to do with each other like it doesn't make any sense right it's like if you've if it's really hard to observe like a caterpillar metamorphosizing metamorphosing into a butterfly it's like you would not think they're the same species.

I mean, it's a similar thing with these eels. Like the newborn eels don't look anything like an eel. Then the glass eels look like these weird transparent fish. You can barely see them even. And then, yeah, even the elvers, they're small. They look like this miniature version. And then they don't even have the gonads until they make that migration back and become sexually mature. And then they're going from freshwater to the ocean.

So it's super weird. They also, their stomachs dissolve as they're making this migration. And they live only off their body fat for thousands and thousands of miles. And then they, after they mate, they will die. So it's messed up, man. They're just like done. Yeah. And I guess a lot of animals are that way.

They're like, it's time to mate. I do that and I'm out. Peace. Like, yeah. Yeah. It's called being simulparous. It's when you, uh, when you meet once and done. I guess I'm thinking of that joke where an eel was claiming it's done a lot of kissing and stuff.

Like, no, you haven't. You're not prepared to die yet. I was just trying to impress eel daddy. And so this confusing thing, for thousands of years, people have been guessing about it. Patrick Svensson starts with Aristotle, who lived in the 300s BC.

And it turns out he understood that fish species lay eggs and breed sexually, but he believed eels were a completely different and unique thing. He thought they were genderless, do not mate, do not lay eggs. And they either just miraculously appear in the world, or they start out as some kind of earthworm type creature in wet mud. And then if the right rainfall hits a dried out body of water, the eels kind of grow and sprout just from the ground. Was his idea.

I mean, you know, he had a lot of good ideas, but you can't always shoot 100. Yeah. And it makes sense that he thought this was super weird and different. Like every other fish in his life was just doing regular fish stuff in a more normal way. And, you know, here we are. Yeah. Yeah.

And then like other people thought other stuff like the the Egyptians thought eels came from the sun's rays reaching the dried out Nile. There were like various European beliefs about eels being born from decomposing seafloor vegetation, almost like fungus or something. Also a belief that when an adult eel died its body broke down into new eels was a guess oh that's fun i like that one and my favorite weird one is a medieval english belief they thought that when a horse lost hairs from its tail and the hairs fell into the water like if the horse was crossing rivers or going over a bridge or something then the hairs fell in the water and became eels like they transformed that's fun i like that that'd be fun like if you combed your hair and then each hair became like a little eel

that would be fun and not the stuff nightmares we could all be eel daddies if that was the case i just i love that like fre was interested in this, too. I mean, it's such a Freud thing because like he kept searching for eel gonads and like he would just like get like get right in there, dissect these eels, tearing them apart, searching frantically for their gonads. searching frantically for their gonads. Because I think he started out as an ichthyologist and then moved into psychology, but he was always obsessed with gonads. Yeah. Patrick Svensson basically says, we don't have a for sure through line there, but it turns out that in 1876, there was a researcher at the University of Vienna who sent his 19-year-old assistant to the Mediterranean to, like, dissect and examine eel species.

And his 19-year-old assistant was young Sigmund Freud. And so he just spent day after day cutting eels open and not finding the sexual organs he was looking for. And, you know, then spent the rest of his life being weird about sexual organs. So there we are. I mean, that needs to be the new copy paste. You know, it's like in that eel penis finder, Sinkman Freud. It's specifically the gonads, though, that they were looking for. I don't want to have someone like, actually, it is the gonads, not the wiener that they

were looking for. Because there are some impassioned eel enthusiasts who also subscribe to eels eels eels monthly another letter to the editor from like sigmund freud the fifth you know like oh actually yeah and then and so just well into the 1900s there was what was called the eel question in like natural science and biology like if you said we're trying to solve the eel question everybody knew what you were talking about like biologists would they would be on their deathbeds going i haven't solved the eel question my one regret yeah and then like the the break in, it begins in the 1890s.

It turns out that in 1896, two Italian researchers theorized that eel larvae might grow into glass eels. And they happened to be correct. And then they were able to observe it in a lab. It's because the Italians got experience with noodles. And so they're like, these are just living sea noodles. So we can figure this out. Like they have like 200 types of pasta here. Like they're going to be able to figure out eels.

Come on. Right. They're just they're training from birth, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And so these guys, apparently it was like international news when they published their findings that the European eel larvae becomes a European glass eel. And from there, that helped other researchers connect the dots of the yellow eel and the silver eel and get all four stages together.

But the last question becomes like, where is this happening? Because they weren't just seeing it happen in the rivers. where is this happening? Because they weren't just seeing it happen in the rivers. And as you wonderfully knew, Katie, Johannes Schmidt, folks, this was a really thrilling page to open in the book. I was like, hold on. Great. But Johannes Schmidt spelled my way. He was a Danish scientist. The other super fun thing about him is that his work was funded by the Carlsberg Beer Company. It turns out, like if people know Carlsberg Beer, it's a pretty famous European beer. They were based in Copenhagen. They opened an advanced in-house research laboratory, mainly to improve the brewing. They were inspired by a visit by Louis Pasteur,

who, among other things, helped people make better beer. Right. But also they like did some kind of philanthropic, let's advance other science. And they funded many Schmidt ocean voyages to collect eel larvae and then measure the sizes and try to triangulate where the smallest larvae were coming from. And that led him all the way to the Sargasso Sea. And in 1923, after taking several years off for World War I, he published his findings. And we know today that that's where they come from. to improve their beer because I could see them. We've got jellied eels in England. Could there be beer, eel beer? Maybe they were looking into eel beer, but in order to make eel beer, you need to know where these eels come from.

Right. Yeah. Also, knowing the folks next door, the Germans, I'm confident somebody someday said, can you make a mustard out of eels? We've made every mustard we possibly can. How do we generate an eel mustard? Is it doable? Or a sausage. They're already basically a sausage.

Yes, right. You know, you don't have to do any work. They're already a sausage. You just spice them up. Yeah, their nature's worst, right? Like, just keep going. Cook it a little bit. Aw, poor eels.

I feel sorry for them. They're just like, I guess we see something spaghetti-shaped, and we're just like, you're food. You're food with eyes. And so many of the best foods are that shape, too. Like, it's, you know. But yeah, and 1923 is when Schmidt published. So technically less than 100 years ago, we finally solved the eel question.

That was just like, I really didn't think scientists thought about eels this much. And it was like a pillar of the challenges of biology, like an unsolved theorem or something. I mean, there was literally a famous biologist who on his deathbed was like saying like, everything's been answered in biology except for eels, which was also not true. Everything had not been answered in biology, but they just thought like this was the one question that was left to biology. I hope he thought that because he had like a really easy discipline or specialty within biology. Like we did it. We know.

That's it. Like you just study chickens. We figured that out a long time ago. I don't know. I mean, chickens are pretty complicated, man. Of course. Yeah. You don't know chickens.

We haven't done it. Have you done a chickens episode? It would be so good. I hope people suggest it now. Yeah. You got to do a chickens episode. If you do do a chickens episode, get me on there.

Oh, yeah. I call dibs. I call dibs on chickens. Yeah. 100%. It's a binding contract. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Katie Golden for being the absolute perfect ideal guest for an Eels episode of a podcast. Right. Everything from bringing the Eel Daddy into our hearts

to knowing I had a Schmidt-related joy in this topic. Just great. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. Stampede for Science. I know that sounds like Mad Libs, but it's a whole show. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this

entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring eels with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, electric eels are extremely electric and are not technically eels. Takeaway number two, in Europe, the life cycle of eels was a major scientific mystery for thousands of years. Within that story, the amazing migration of the European eel from the Sargasso Sea to European streams and back across four different life stages, and then a slew of other numbers about Japanese eel consumption, worldwide eel species ranges, a TikTok eel daddy, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. She's great. Katie Golden is the host of Creature Feature. Creature Feature is a podcast on iHeartRadio. It's a weekly show where we discover,

you know, connections between humans and animals, straight up amazing things about animals. There's a whole amazing sound guessing segment toward the end of it. It's just a fantastic podcast, and I can't recommend it enough. On top of that, at ProBirdWrites on Twitter and at Katie Golden on Twitter. That's G-O-L-D-I-N. And of course, check out Some More News, a fantastic YouTube channel that many friends of the show are involved in. Katie is one of the writers behind that. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. Read a fantastic book this week. It is called The Book of Eels. That is by Swedish journalist Patrick Svensson, translated to English by Agnes Bruma, and taught me about a wonderful Johannes Schmidt. And then a slew of other resources online from places like National

Geographic, the U.S. National Aquarium, The Atlantic, and the Atlantic Magazine. I guess The Ocean too, basically. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show about the electric eels and the horses and so on. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.