Professor Will Crampton
speaker
73 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Jul
Professor Will Crampton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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They generate very high voltage discharges.
So these voltages can reach as high as 860 volts.
And it was in fact a specimen of electric eel from Brazil that I recorded that has the world record for the highest voltage.
When I found this fish, I was helping National Geographic make a film about electric eels.
And we trapped a few electric eels and we had local fishermen catch some for us.
And one of them I recorded to demonstrate to the film crew
what kind of voltage it reaches, and I was very surprised by that fish.
It had a much higher voltage than other fish that I'd seen.
I'd never seen higher than around 600, and this one was really standing out.
It was precisely 860.
but they will emit these high voltage discharges in the form of very rapid volleys up to around 100 per second.
And they'll do that for maybe something like a quarter of a second to a second in duration, a long volley of them.
They do that when they're frightened.
And they will also do that when they're hunting.
So they will move up very close to something they want to eat.
And then they'll essentially blast it with this long volley of very high voltage pulses.
So the effect is to essentially cause muscular tetanus to paralyze their prey temporarily with just enough time that it takes for them to swallow.
Measurements of the voltage of an electric eel are quite easy to do.
You essentially use an oscilloscope.
So you put one probe at the very end of its tail and you put the other on the tip of its snout and it will generate its high voltage signal.
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