In the murky freshwater rivers and streams that snake across the Amazon lurks an eight-foot fascination: the electric eel. Since their discovery more than 250 years ago by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, researchers have thought the electric eel was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, with only one species, Electrophorus electricus.
Now scientists say they have discovered two new species of the electrifying fish, one of which can generate an electric discharge far stronger than E. electricus.
“These fish grow to be seven to eight feet long. They’re really conspicuous,” Smithsonian Institute zoologist David de Santana said in a press release. “If you can discover a new eight-foot-long fish after 250 years of scientific exploration, can you imagine what remains to be discovered in that region?”
De Santana and colleagues first collected more than 100 electric eels from the rivers and lowland floodplains that ripple vein-like across northern South America. Then the researchers ...
