Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should
Speaker 1: know about Eel.
Speaker 2: I know another podcast that has ruined something I like
Speaker 2: to eat.
Speaker 1: But now I can what did it ruin? Or why? How? What? What? Part?
Speaker 1: How about this? When we get to the part where
Speaker 1: you're like, this ruined eel for me, shout scream at
Speaker 1: the top of your lungs. Okay, okay. I want to
Speaker 1: give a hat tip to David Byrne via you Me
Speaker 1: who inspired this episode.
Speaker 3: David Byrne.
Speaker 1: Yeah, d David Byrne you me. He was watching David
Speaker 1: Byrne videos. He's on tour and I think she's going
Speaker 1: to see him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great show.
Speaker 1: Have you seen it?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've seen the last couple of tours.
Speaker 1: It's it's great, awesome. So he apparently he was talking
Speaker 1: about a book he was reading about Eels and how
Speaker 1: fascinating it was. So that kicked off the idea for
Speaker 1: an episode on Eels.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I went to read a new book.
Speaker 2: I just finished my book, Cameron Crowe's Memoir, which is fantastic,
Speaker 2: I'm sure. And by the way, I commented on his
Speaker 2: Instagram about what a great book it.
Speaker 3: Was, and he started following me.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I got to think that it was either
Speaker 2: an accident or maybe he listens to stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: I don't see why he would randomly just be like,
Speaker 2: I'll follow anyone who says they like my book, right, So,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Cameron Crow, if you're listening, it's pretty
Speaker 2: exciting for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what uh great book.
Speaker 2: Though his memoir is just it's almost too incredible to
Speaker 2: believe that that happened to him in his life.
Speaker 1: Is it called recounting Crow? Uh?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, No, it's called the Uncool But man, he
Speaker 2: really missed an opportunity there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think more he dodged a bullet.
Speaker 3: Probably so. But I went to read a new book,
Speaker 3: Talking Heads. It was.
Speaker 2: I had two books in my hand, the Talking Heads
Speaker 2: book and Abel Ferrara's memoir The Filmmaker, and I went
Speaker 2: with the Abel ferrar just because Bonnie Prince Billy recommended
Speaker 2: it and it's shorter.
Speaker 3: But Talking Heads is up next. That's it.
Speaker 1: I just watched Bad Lieutenant all the way through for
Speaker 1: the first time. Oh, This is a.
Speaker 3: Good movie, buddy, what a film.
Speaker 1: I've got King of New York next.
Speaker 3: So are you on a kick now for him a
Speaker 3: little bit?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Where'd that come from? Bonnie Prince Billy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I don't remember. I think I just ran
Speaker 1: across Bad Lieutenant. And I've known about it since I
Speaker 1: was a teenager and it's never really watched it.
Speaker 3: Oh have you ever seen King of New York?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Oh, dude, it's so good.
Speaker 1: Oh good, I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean he's one of my favorite filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Great. Yeah, Apparently there's lots of rumors that Harvey Kitel
Speaker 1: actually was on all the drugs he was supposed to
Speaker 1: be on on Bad Lieutenant.
Speaker 3: I'll let you know when I get to that chapter.
Speaker 1: And I saw someone say, like, no, he actually wasn't
Speaker 1: he's just that good of an actor. But that Abel
Speaker 1: Ferrara and the rest of the crew probably were on
Speaker 1: all those same drugs while they were shooting it.
Speaker 2: I know he was pretty into drugs. So I've only
Speaker 2: a couple of chapters in so far, but it's really good.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, when you get to the chapter called drugs, Colon,
Speaker 1: I love them.
Speaker 2: Let me know, all right, all that to say is
Speaker 2: that we're talking about eels, and we'll get right into it.
Speaker 2: If you're an eel, if you want to claim to
Speaker 2: be an eel, you got to have certain qualifications. You
Speaker 2: can't just be like a sea snake or an electric eel,
Speaker 2: which isn't an eel by the way. You have to
Speaker 2: be a member of the order Anguilliforms or Anguilliformis. Twenty
Speaker 2: families of eels, one hundred and eleven gen era, more than
Speaker 2: eight hundred species, ranging from just about four inches to
Speaker 2: those big old morey eels sometimes up to twelve feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twelve foot long eel. That's just amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one thing that they all have in common is
Speaker 1: that they have long bodies that are typically worm like.
Speaker 1: They don't have pelvic fins, right, so, yeah, the ones
Speaker 1: that you would have developed head you descended from water hippos.
Speaker 1: That's whales. A lot of them don't have pectoral fins.
Speaker 1: Some of them do have the dorsal fin on the back.
Speaker 1: But essentially they're just like worms or snakes, like slithering
Speaker 1: through the water, and that actually is exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They're slithering in a wave like motion. That's how they
Speaker 1: make their way because again, they don't really have fins.
Speaker 1: This to me is one of the facts of the podcast.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Take it though.
Speaker 1: So eels can swim backward just by changing the direction
Speaker 1: of the wave. Yes, they make a beeping sound when
Speaker 1: they do.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's amazing. I mean they got to let
Speaker 2: everyone know. It's like I can't I can't see where
Speaker 2: I'm going. Everyone eel coming through.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, I just want to take a second for
Speaker 1: a ps A. If you drive a truck that makes
Speaker 1: a beeping sound when it backs up, never ever just
Speaker 1: sit there idling with your reverse gear and reverse. People
Speaker 1: are allowed to do that. Yes, you mean I used
Speaker 1: to live next to it was like a nursing home,
Speaker 1: I guess, and they like we lived on the side
Speaker 1: of their like delivery area, and dudes would just do that,
Speaker 1: just sit there with with their truck and reverse not moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at like six in the morning.
Speaker 2: No, all right, I agree. Eels had that smooth, slippery
Speaker 2: skin and it is coated in a slime. It's a
Speaker 2: protective slime. It helps them with they're swimming. It makes
Speaker 2: them very streamlined, and it also helps regulate how much
Speaker 2: water is in their bodies, which is pretty unusual. And
Speaker 2: they're predatory, like they're eating other fish basically while they're
Speaker 2: down there. Yea.
Speaker 1: What something else that's very neat about eels is that
Speaker 1: they don't like they're not boring little baby eels and
Speaker 1: then they grow up into big twelve foot long, two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pound eels. They actually go through stages
Speaker 1: of metamorphosis like the butterfly does. Yeah, Like they don't
Speaker 1: look anything like an eel when they're born, and as
Speaker 1: they grow they actually change shape and color in addition
Speaker 1: to size. They also very frequently will move from like
Speaker 1: the ocean to freshwater creeks far inland. Like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great stuff that eels do that we just
Speaker 1: had overlooked for a very long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's some fun, really fun stuff coming.
Speaker 2: They're basically solitary. I think there's a couple that we'll
Speaker 2: talk about later that hang out in the hundreds or thousands,
Speaker 2: but generally, yeah, like, if you're an eel of size,
Speaker 2: you're gonna be swimming around by yourself, backing up by yourself,
Speaker 2: beeping by yourself. They migrate, and you know, we'll talk
Speaker 2: more about how they spawn later, because it was a
Speaker 2: bit of a mystery for a long long.
Speaker 3: Time and still kind of is in some ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they do migrate to a spawning area, and
Speaker 2: they think they use the urtht magnetic fields. They use
Speaker 2: magnetite in their bodies to navigate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're not the only animals that do, so
Speaker 1: we don't know for a fact. We just know that
Speaker 1: there is magnetite in their heads and that that is
Speaker 1: probably what's going on because it's so spectacular the migrations
Speaker 1: that they go. That's essentially the only explanation we have
Speaker 1: on hand.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: If they are in tropical areas, warmer waters, where they
Speaker 2: get migrate to spawn is probably nearish. But if they're
Speaker 2: in the colder areas, it seems like they migrate to
Speaker 2: the warmer areas to spawn, so they may have to
Speaker 2: go a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like how people in the Caribbean they don't
Speaker 1: go on vacation because they live on vacation. That's right.
Speaker 1: And like you said, electric eels aren't eels, and there's
Speaker 1: really not a whole lot else to say about electric
Speaker 1: eels really.
Speaker 3: No, they're knife fish. They're closer to a catfish than
Speaker 3: an eel.
Speaker 2: Sure, so forget those guys pretty much.
Speaker 1: We really looked too. We're like electric kills. We got
Speaker 1: to find out even though they're not eels, they've got
Speaker 1: to be kind of interesting. Not really, so sorry everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what is interesting is the more a eel.
Speaker 2: This is the sort of the most famous of the
Speaker 2: ocean dwelling eels, the saltwater eels, member of the family
Speaker 2: Muraneda fifteen genera. There two hundred species makes up about
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of all the eels, and they live
Speaker 2: like you know, if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving,
Speaker 2: you probably haven't seen one during the day. But if
Speaker 2: you've ever gone and put your face in a heidi
Speaker 2: hole in that coral, maybe you could see one because
Speaker 2: that's where they like to hide.
Speaker 1: Yes, be careful though, because they probably will buy you
Speaker 1: if you stick your face in their heidi hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I did that a little bit in Belize. I was
Speaker 2: asked to snorkel fishing guys with this. There were spearfishing
Speaker 2: and stuff, and I was like, like with spear guns.
Speaker 2: I was like, can you teach me? They're like, come on,
Speaker 2: just follow along. And then you know, he told me
Speaker 2: dive down there and put your face in that hole
Speaker 2: and tell me what he saw.
Speaker 3: Did you really Yeah, yeah, it was It was cool.
Speaker 2: I was like, I was trying to do it like
Speaker 2: they did it, you know, sure, but I didn't get
Speaker 2: anything they did, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: Did you see an eel though?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: But it was a little scary to put your face
Speaker 3: down there, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean doing that above ground can be
Speaker 1: pretty unnerving. Under the sea, that's just scary. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I felt like Timothy Dalton then Flash Gordon when he
Speaker 2: reached his hand into that thing, or.
Speaker 1: I guess Indiana Jones. Didn't he do that in One
Speaker 1: of them had spiders everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were insects. He had to stick his hand,
Speaker 3: I think, reaching for a lever or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so great. One of my favorites are it's a
Speaker 1: type of mori. It's called the ribbon eel. Did you
Speaker 1: look pictures up of these guys.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're gorgeous, gorgeous.
Speaker 1: So there. They are very appropriately named. They're very flat
Speaker 1: and wide. They do look like ribbons, especially when they're
Speaker 1: undulating through the water. But one of the cool things
Speaker 1: is is that they're born as males blue and yellow males,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden they go boop, I'm
Speaker 1: in all yellow female now yeah, check me out. And
Speaker 1: they can reproduce either way, depending on what phase of
Speaker 1: life they're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just incredible, very bright, almost fluorescent like, kind
Speaker 2: of one of those you know, undersea colors that just
Speaker 2: don't feel like they should exist in nature, but it
Speaker 2: definitely exists in the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, beautiful, all right, so there.
Speaker 2: If you know a more, you know, they have a
Speaker 2: great smile. They're known for those those really scary looking teeth.
Speaker 2: They have two sets of jaws. The second set, the
Speaker 2: fairyngeal jaws, faces backwards to kind of lock you in
Speaker 2: and keep you from escaping if they have you in
Speaker 2: their grasp. Yeah, but they're not dead or not after you.
Speaker 2: You don't need to be afraid of the moray eel
Speaker 2: like if they if they get you in the water,
Speaker 2: it's probably because you're in there at night and it's
Speaker 2: obviously an accident.
Speaker 3: They're not like after people.
Speaker 1: Right, they only get you when you stick your face
Speaker 1: in their heidi hole.
Speaker 3: H Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why people are like man, those
Speaker 1: things look really aggressive. Is because they show their teeth
Speaker 1: a lot. And that's not because they're trying to scare
Speaker 1: you or because they're really proud of their teeth. It's
Speaker 1: because they lack opercula, which are those plate like covers
Speaker 1: that go over fish gills, you know that they kind
Speaker 1: of go back and forth on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they flamber like.
Speaker 1: That Mondy python sketching with the Meaning of Life where
Speaker 1: their goldfish and they're moving their hands. They were simulating opercula,
Speaker 1: and one of the things opercula does is it regulates
Speaker 1: and kind of moves water over the gills. Well, the
Speaker 1: mores don't have that, so they have to get a
Speaker 1: lot of water through their mouth and then that's how
Speaker 1: they funnel the water through the gills. And of course
Speaker 1: the gills is where the oxygen is absorbed out of
Speaker 1: the water into the circulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So that's when you're gonna see the teeth.
Speaker 2: Like I said, you're not gonna get bitten most likely,
Speaker 2: but if you do, it's not going to be fun
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: Those teeth are very sharp.
Speaker 2: It's a very painful bite apparently because it punctures very deep,
Speaker 2: so it could always get like tendons and nerves and stuff.
Speaker 2: And while they are not venomous, they do that slime.
Speaker 2: They have slime in their mouths as well, and it's
Speaker 2: a substance called hema glutenin, and it causes red blood
Speaker 2: cells to clump up.
Speaker 3: But they also.
Speaker 2: They think they generate something called chriinotoxin, so that destroys
Speaker 2: red blood cells. So all of that stuff is a
Speaker 2: why it's painful, and it can be like super prone
Speaker 2: to infection. Those teeth can break off in your wound.
Speaker 2: It's really not good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw Chriinotoxins also are the reason catfish things hurt.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like we talked about that in our
Speaker 3: noodling episode.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, that's like sticking your face in
Speaker 1: the Heidi hole, but using your arm instead of your face.
Speaker 1: That's right. So the more is a type of ocean eel,
Speaker 1: and you can kind of divide eels into ocean and
Speaker 1: fresh water as we'll see, although ocean eels are far
Speaker 1: and away the largest in number and type, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the other big big I guess ocean eels
Speaker 1: is called the conger from family congrete A, and they
Speaker 1: are like deep water dwellers like three thousand feet below
Speaker 1: the surface. Some of them hang out in some rocky
Speaker 1: areas like More's maybe around coral reefs. But the thing
Speaker 1: that's remarkable about the European conger is that that's the
Speaker 1: heaviest one, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not as long and slender as the more
Speaker 2: they're they're still long and snakelike, but they're they're rounder.
Speaker 2: Like the biggest one recorded as two hundred and forty
Speaker 2: two pounds, Yeah, which is you know, it's it's a
Speaker 2: game fish. So if you got a two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty two, that's a pretty good catch that day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like how much a couchways? Yeah, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I said that because I've been forgetting
Speaker 1: just to mention this. So our dear awesome friend Brandon Reid, right,
Speaker 1: he created he's our webmaster everybody. He runs and created
Speaker 1: stuff you should know dot com Yeah and pal, yes,
Speaker 1: and great great pal. He created a website called Josh
Speaker 1: Clark Calculates and you can go to Josh Clark Calculates
Speaker 1: dot com. I didn't look it up and get this,
Speaker 1: so you can basically describe anything in a measurement of
Speaker 1: whatever you want so somebody is a big Max tall,
Speaker 1: so you can select big Max Olympic swimming pools. All
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've ever used to essentially describe the
Speaker 1: size or shape or volume of something you can now
Speaker 1: do on Josh Clark calculates dot com.
Speaker 3: Why why am I just now learning about this?
Speaker 1: Because I kept forgetting to mention it and he showed
Speaker 1: it to me before. I guess he showed it to
Speaker 1: me in Chicago when he came to the show.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm looking at it now.
Speaker 2: Josh Clark calculates the weirdest way to measure absolutely anything, right,
Speaker 2: the Space Then the example in the homepage is the
Speaker 2: Space Shuttle Endeavor has the speed of how many washing
Speaker 2: washing machines? And he press a button and it says,
Speaker 2: beat boob, the Space Shuttle Endeavor has the speed of
Speaker 2: twenty two thousand, seven hundred and seventy eight washing machines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was telling me like, that's like those
Speaker 1: are legitimate measurements, like comparison.
Speaker 3: Well, this is my new favorite homepage.
Speaker 1: That awesome. Yeah, that is so cool, man, Love Brandon.
Speaker 3: We'll have to get a band named Generator or something going.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good idea to you.
Speaker 2: All Right, that was a lot of fun. I feel
Speaker 2: like we should take a break. Everyone can go visit
Speaker 2: that website and calculate some stuff and we'll be back
Speaker 2: with more about eels.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, we're back, and now we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about my favorite kind of eel. Is this your favorite
Speaker 1: kind of eel? Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 3: These cute little guys look like plants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've seen these before. I had no idea
Speaker 1: there were eels, but they're like, yeah, little worm like
Speaker 1: stems sticking up out of the sandy bottom, waving kind
Speaker 1: of back and forth with the current. And there's so
Speaker 1: many of them it does it looks like just kind
Speaker 1: of a field of plants. But if you zoom in,
Speaker 1: they are these cute little eels with cute little faces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just eating plankton that goes past, and they spend most
Speaker 1: of their lives cemented in the sandy bottom, even though
Speaker 1: they're able to get out and move free. That's just
Speaker 1: kind of where they live. It's also their heidi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're called garden eels, and I think when they
Speaker 2: get startled, they their whole body goes back in their
Speaker 2: little burrow. But yeah, these are the ones that can
Speaker 2: hang out together, so it look like a little field
Speaker 2: of seagrass and beat thousands of these little guys just
Speaker 2: waving around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're so cute too, just lolick up garden eel
Speaker 1: and look at their little very serious faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you are an eel that's living deep in
Speaker 2: the ocean, you're not going to be one of the
Speaker 2: colorful ones. You're probably going to be black or dull gray.
Speaker 2: And the gulp or eel is another one that you
Speaker 2: should look up when it's safe to do so. This
Speaker 2: is it's also called the pelican eel. They're all over
Speaker 2: the world, basically in tropical and temperate climates, and they
Speaker 2: are very deep dwellers, like five to ten thousand feet
Speaker 2: below the surface, and they look crazy. They are a
Speaker 2: few feet long, and their jaw is really the star
Speaker 2: of the show. It's a lot bigger than their skull
Speaker 2: and it can unhinge and act as a scoop. It
Speaker 2: looks sort of like well, I mean, they call it
Speaker 2: pelican for a and it looks pelican s but its
Speaker 2: shaped like a shovel, like if a shovel and a
Speaker 2: bucket got together and made it.
Speaker 3: This is what it would look.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, and it doesn't always look like that, right,
Speaker 1: so when it changes shape it looks extremely alien. It's
Speaker 1: really neat. The video I saw was Gulper eel balloons
Speaker 1: its massive jaw a nautilus live and it's just amazing
Speaker 1: to watch that thing do its thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, that very very cool.
Speaker 2: This is this next section to me is kind of
Speaker 2: one of the most astounding things that I didn't know about.
Speaker 2: It is the fact that eels have a real big
Speaker 2: significance in human history, and especially in medieval Europe. But
Speaker 2: we're talking mainly about the American eel, the European eel,
Speaker 2: and the Japanese eel. These are fresh water eels. They
Speaker 2: go to spawn in the oceans, but they live in
Speaker 2: fresh water, and they were a huge, huge, huge source
Speaker 2: of food for a very long time in a lot
Speaker 2: of parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and still are. Japan loves unagi.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah. One of the reasons why they played such
Speaker 1: a role as a food source around the world is
Speaker 1: that number one, they were easy to come by, like literally,
Speaker 1: they're swimming around in streams and rivers all over the
Speaker 1: northern hemisphere. And in addition to that, they're really really nutritious.
Speaker 1: It turns out high in protein, lots of vitamin B twelve,
Speaker 1: vitamin A, vitamin D that's hard to come by if
Speaker 1: you're not out in the sun. Yeah.
Speaker 3: B twelve for goats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, And only three hundred and seventy five calories
Speaker 1: for an eel fil a, which is actually pretty new
Speaker 1: calorie dnse for a fish. But it's it's very good
Speaker 1: for you too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of good fat and protein in there as well.
Speaker 2: And that unagi that I used to love to eat.
Speaker 2: I would cook it up myself. It was delicious.
Speaker 1: Oh really, you cooked it yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I talked about this before. There's a
Speaker 2: near the Decab farmers market near where I live. There's
Speaker 2: the I think it's cool stand, the first Oriental market,
Speaker 2: and they sell eel as well as lots of like
Speaker 2: kitchen wars and kind of cool stuff from Japan. But sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can go get eel there out of the fridge
Speaker 2: and bake it in your oven and coat it with
Speaker 2: some I used taraaki, but I think traditionally is the
Speaker 2: kabayaki sauce is used.
Speaker 1: Is that right to drill.
Speaker 2: To grill those things up and it's I mean, kabayaki
Speaker 2: is basically the same. I think it just doesn't have
Speaker 2: like I think it's like a stripped down taraiyaki. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have ginger and garlic in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's also a little thicker too, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's about the same, but it's just uh,
Speaker 2: it's kind of just the sweet stuff.
Speaker 1: It is very good. I agree with you. I nothing
Speaker 1: in here really put me off of eel, especially your nagi.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's good for you.
Speaker 1: One of the things you haven't screamed yet. We haven't
Speaker 1: reached that part yet.
Speaker 3: No, no, okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the reasons zunagi is, I guess noteworthy
Speaker 1: in Japanese culture. One as far as sushi goes, it's
Speaker 1: one of the rare parts of sushi that's ever cooked,
Speaker 1: like across the board. Yeah. And then number two, it's
Speaker 1: called one of the big four foods of the Edo period,
Speaker 1: which I think ran from the seventeenth century to the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Those four were soba, sushi, and doctor pepper.
Speaker 3: I know this answer, So you didn't get me this time.
Speaker 1: What is the other one?
Speaker 2: The other one is timpura and you mentioned it's the
Speaker 2: only one that's like routinely cooked because you have to
Speaker 2: because eel blood is toxic to human so you have
Speaker 2: to grill that stuff up just right. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: one of the things that is dound to me. Is
Speaker 2: I didn't know that it was such a big deal
Speaker 2: in the northeastern US in eastern Canada before and after colonization,
Speaker 2: so indigenous peoples loved eel. I think eel's made up
Speaker 2: about a quarter more than a quarter of the fish
Speaker 2: found in streams along the coast of the of northern
Speaker 2: northeastern Northern America. Yeah, and you know, you could smoke
Speaker 2: it and carry it with you on the trail, you
Speaker 2: could salt it and cure it, and obviously you could
Speaker 2: you know, trap them and grill them up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the things that I've read
Speaker 1: somewhere is that like an eel file at is it
Speaker 1: does not taste fishy. I saw it compared to a
Speaker 1: taste of venison. Even I've my experience with eel has
Speaker 1: never been like that. It's always been like a little
Speaker 1: bit like on on sushi. Have Did you ever eat
Speaker 1: like a big hunk of eel at once?
Speaker 2: No, It's always just been, you know, like you would
Speaker 2: eat on sushi, but they come in a in a
Speaker 2: long eel like package.
Speaker 3: Sure, and then you know, you just bake it in
Speaker 3: the oven. I think they're already pre cooked.
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, so you're so they maybe shrunk or something,
Speaker 2: but you're basically just heating it up and glazing it.
Speaker 1: I gotcha. Smoke deal sounds kind of good. I would
Speaker 1: try smoke deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds really good.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just the indigenous peoples of North America
Speaker 1: who were eating eel. The people in Europe at the
Speaker 1: same time were crazy for eel and had been for
Speaker 1: centuries and centuries. Apparently they've found old willow traps, which
Speaker 1: are basically like woven baskets that are easy to get
Speaker 1: into and hard to get out of. That eel would
Speaker 1: swim into and they'd be like, oh no, not again,
Speaker 1: and they would become smoked or salted or dried and
Speaker 1: very interestingly chuck. They would often be used as currency.
Speaker 1: That's how valued eel were, but also how common they
Speaker 1: were too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the fact that the episode for me
Speaker 2: had no idea that in medieval times, not at medieval times,
Speaker 2: but during medieval times, about half a million dried eels
Speaker 2: were used to pay rent in England every single year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for all sorts of debts. And I mean it
Speaker 1: continued on for a very long time. And to kill
Speaker 1: a mockingbird, Walter Cunningham from Old Saram pays Atticus Finch
Speaker 1: and a thousand live eels at one point.
Speaker 3: Is that for real? Oh man? I never wanted to
Speaker 3: cuss so bad on the show.
Speaker 1: No. And the reason why that's a giveaway, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: that I said live eels. Nobody wanted the live eels.
Speaker 1: They wanted them prepared, smoked, yeah, dried, and then depending
Speaker 1: on how many were put together. Did you see like
Speaker 1: there were different names for like ten eels together, Yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty five eels together.
Speaker 3: Like wrap them up? And when was a stick? Was one?
Speaker 1: Uh huh, that's like twenty five okay, and then uh no,
Speaker 1: that's ten. Yeah, a bind is twenty five, And those
Speaker 1: are basically they were treated like denominations, like I'll give
Speaker 1: you a bind of eels for that can of doctor pepper.
Speaker 3: Two bindes stick. Yeah, it'd be twenty five or it'd
Speaker 3: be sixty. Well we should type it into Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: Exactly see, it'd be like, does not compute.
Speaker 3: There needs to be one in there. For Josh Clark calculates.
Speaker 2: It was like, how many eels would it take to
Speaker 2: live in the East village for a month?
Speaker 1: That's a good one man, whatever year, ten trillion eels.
Speaker 3: Or how many sticks is that?
Speaker 1: That's a trillion sticks?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: That was an easy one.
Speaker 2: They were very popular food wise though, during church holidays
Speaker 2: and during fasting seasons because and this is like up
Speaker 2: to like a few months out of the year or
Speaker 2: more than that one hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like six months.
Speaker 1: A quarter of the year.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, third, Oh god, here we go, a third
Speaker 3: a third?
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna type it into your website again.
Speaker 2: You could not eat meat, but you could eat fish
Speaker 2: during those fasting season. So because there were so many eels,
Speaker 2: they were you know, it's a pretty attractive meal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a nice meal of eels, that's right. There was
Speaker 1: one other reason too, that we'll see why they were
Speaker 1: highly thought of for fasting during Christian or Catholic I
Speaker 1: guess feast days was that they are have long been
Speaker 1: considered a sexual because as we'll see that, like people
Speaker 1: have no idea how they've reproduced. And I thought that.
Speaker 3: Was pretty interesting, Yeah, super interesting.
Speaker 1: Like regular fish that have sex would just make you
Speaker 1: think of nothing but sex while you're eating them, I guess.
Speaker 1: But at eel you're all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, should we take a break or should
Speaker 2: we talk about the reproduction now?
Speaker 1: I'd say we take a break, man, Okay.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to talk about how they reproduce
Speaker 2: right after this. All right, everybody back to the mystery
Speaker 2: of eel reproduction. In the old days, in the classical
Speaker 2: Mediterranean era, they had all kinds of crazy ideas about
Speaker 2: how eels reproduce because they seemed to just appear. No
Speaker 2: one ever saw them doing it. No one ever saw
Speaker 2: eel eggs. People had cut eels open and found no
Speaker 2: reproductive organs. Seems to be unusually preoccupied with this, in
Speaker 2: my opinion. They had a lot of weird opinions and
Speaker 2: theories as well.
Speaker 1: Right, sure, sure, but imagine if, like, you know how
Speaker 1: much cow stay chicken. Okay, humans eat a lot of chicken.
Speaker 1: Imagine if while you're eating chicken, you're like, where the
Speaker 1: hell do you chickens come from? No one has any
Speaker 1: idea like the chicken is solicious, but I have no
Speaker 1: idea how chickens are born.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you probably should have picked something that
Speaker 2: doesn't lay an egg in front of you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, sure, I get what you mean.
Speaker 1: But I think that's another reason why the mystery is
Speaker 1: so deep. As they're like, yeah, chickens lay eggs, pigs,
Speaker 1: they'd love to do it. Like they're all like they
Speaker 1: knew how everything else came about. Basically, eels, they're like,
Speaker 1: I guess they just spontaneously generate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Finally, in seventeen seventy seven, there was an Italian surgeon
Speaker 2: and researcher named Carlo Mundine and he finally don't ask
Speaker 2: me how, but he finally located the ovaries of an eel,
Speaker 2: and they for decades no one could replicate that fact.
Speaker 2: And then eventually they found the testicles as well. And
Speaker 2: no less than Sigmund Freud was one of the one
Speaker 2: of the people looking for those eel testes.
Speaker 1: My friend, he was the one who found them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is earlier in his career, but yeah,
Speaker 2: he dissected four hundred eels. I guess he on the
Speaker 2: four hundred and first found him.
Speaker 1: It's always the last deal you look in. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: So Freud was the person who identified for the first time.
Speaker 1: People have been thinking about this for two thousand years
Speaker 1: at least, how eels reproduced. But at the same time
Speaker 1: they were like, great, they have gonads, they have ovaries,
Speaker 1: where do they like Why don't we ever see them
Speaker 1: using these things? Why don't we ever see their babies?
Speaker 1: This is all very weird. So the mystery continued even
Speaker 1: after Freud, although it was really kind of starting to
Speaker 1: heat up around that time. I think Freud found the
Speaker 1: gonads in eighteen seventy six, and within a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: I think within a decade they had far more material
Speaker 1: to work with than they had. So, like it went
Speaker 1: from two thousand years of not knowing what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on to Bam, bam bam, we almost have
Speaker 1: it figured out.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, Like we knew that they met morphosize.
Speaker 2: We knew that those glass eels, they're basically transparent little babies.
Speaker 2: They would show up in coastal waters every spring, and
Speaker 2: they knew that they shurned into adolescent eels they're called elvers,
Speaker 2: and they know that they would eventually turn color and
Speaker 2: swim up rivers, and they knew they would eventually become
Speaker 2: yellow eels and that they love to eat those things,
Speaker 2: and then eventually they would become silver eels. Is the
Speaker 2: final stop on the eel train, and that is when
Speaker 2: they developed the equipment to reproduce and go up river
Speaker 2: into the ocean. But the part between silver eels going
Speaker 2: from the river and then the glass eel floating around
Speaker 2: was the mystery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you put those two things together, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the glass eels show up on the coast, the silver
Speaker 1: eels swim out to sea, seems like that these freshwater
Speaker 1: eels breeding grounds are somewhere out there in the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be right. Yeah. So before that, there was
Speaker 1: this idea that there were these little things, almost plankton
Speaker 1: like organisms, or I think they were plankton, which apparently
Speaker 1: the definition of plankton is any floating sea life that
Speaker 1: just gets moved along by the current, can't move around itself.
Speaker 1: There were these little tiny floating I guess they were
Speaker 1: shaped like willow leaves, and they were identified as leptocephalous
Speaker 1: Revostis rostras, and they thought this was a whole different
Speaker 1: type of fish, and it turned out what they were
Speaker 1: looking at were the larva of eels. They misidentified them
Speaker 1: as something and it took like a couple of decades
Speaker 1: before they were like, no, this is actually eel larva.
Speaker 1: And they found out thanks to a French guy named
Speaker 1: Eve Delage, who probably was quite surprised when he put
Speaker 1: one of these things in a tank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he put one in a tank and saw it
Speaker 2: go through every metamorphosis. I guess I would assume he
Speaker 2: kept getting bigger tanks, unless you had a big one
Speaker 2: to begin with. But eventually it became a glass, and
Speaker 2: then an elver, and then about ten years after that,
Speaker 2: there was an Italian zoologist named Giovanni Battista who saw
Speaker 2: this happen out in the wild. And so, all right,
Speaker 2: we really are cooking with gas now, but where do
Speaker 2: those little silver eels go? Where are they going to
Speaker 2: make this larva? They still hadn't figured out that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, once they mature. So there's a Dutch marine biologist
Speaker 1: named Ernst Johann Schmidt, which is a great Danish name.
Speaker 1: I think I said Dutch, right, He's a Dane, Sorry,
Speaker 1: Danish people. He was supported by the Carlsburg Foundation, and
Speaker 1: yet they were founded by the beer company. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they essentially funded scientific expeditions. They funded Ernst Schmidt and
Speaker 1: he started He just basically set out to figure out
Speaker 1: this mystery of how silver eels produce the little willow
Speaker 1: leaf larva.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So he started fishing his nets along the coast and
Speaker 2: he found them in the North Sea. He found them
Speaker 2: in the Mediterranean, and they were pretty big by this point.
Speaker 2: So he was like, I don't think this is where
Speaker 2: they started because they've grown a little too much. So
Speaker 2: he got together with some commercial fishing boats, said hey,
Speaker 2: I could use some help because you guys are all
Speaker 2: over the Atlantic, and they helped him out, and in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve he had a report finally to publish that said, really,
Speaker 2: these little small larvae and silver eels are, which is
Speaker 2: the end stage, all the way out in the mid Atlantic,
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he was like, I think that they probably
Speaker 1: breed in the Sargasso Sea. And he never found them.
Speaker 1: He never saw that they were in the Sargasso Sea.
Speaker 1: But it turned out he was correct.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Sargasso see apparently is a pretty rich breeding ground for
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons. One reason and because of the
Speaker 2: brown sarcasm that floats on top, I think it just
Speaker 2: creates a sort of a nice, covered, shady habitat. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's not just the eels. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of things kind of reproduce in the Sargasso.
Speaker 1: Sea, for sure. And the reason the Sargasso Sea is
Speaker 1: remarkable is it's a sea in the Atlantic.
Speaker 3: Ocean, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And it's kept in place by I think four currents
Speaker 1: that kind of come together and create a gyre. And
Speaker 1: in the middle of this gyre is what we call
Speaker 1: the Sargasso Sea. And it's relatively still compared to the
Speaker 1: rest of the ocean. It's very high in saline, and
Speaker 1: it stays pretty warm. It's largely off the coast of
Speaker 1: the eastern United States, I believe, is where it's mostly situated,
Speaker 1: all the way out to the Azores zorusors sure. And
Speaker 1: it turns out in I think twenty eighteen, a European
Speaker 1: team led by Rosalind Wright found out that yes, Ernest
Speaker 1: Schmidt was correct that they do eels do actually mate
Speaker 1: in the Sargasso Sea.
Speaker 2: That's right now, that's those There are other freshwater eels
Speaker 2: that spawn in other places. Obviously, they don't all go there.
Speaker 2: I think Japanese eels spawn at these underwater mountains around
Speaker 2: the Marianna Ridge, which is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: So neat. Yeah, yeah, And then I think African long
Speaker 1: fin eels spawn in the Indian Ocean. And you might say,
Speaker 1: like who cares, Like, yeah, it was a mystery, but yeah,
Speaker 1: think about this. Eels are like halfway up the Rhine
Speaker 1: in Germany. Yeah, They're like, well, it's time for me
Speaker 1: to go reproduce, so I'm getting to be that age.
Speaker 1: They swim all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the
Speaker 1: Sargasso Sea. That's where they mate, and then their little
Speaker 1: tiny larvae, these little floating plankton, make their way all
Speaker 1: the way back two Europe again, where they turn into
Speaker 1: glass eels then elvas, and then swim back up and
Speaker 1: take their place up the Rhine until they do the
Speaker 1: same thing. That's a very strange reproductive strategy, but that's
Speaker 1: what eels do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Eels are like salmon, please exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a word for it. I can't quite bring
Speaker 1: to mind. I want to say catacephalic, that might be it.
Speaker 1: But essentially it's they're born in the ocean, but they
Speaker 1: live their lives in fresh water.
Speaker 3: Now yeah, yeah, what was that word? I remember seeing
Speaker 3: it now, catacephalic.
Speaker 1: It's probably wrong, but I'm going to say that authoritatively.
Speaker 2: All right, So today eels the International Union for Conservation
Speaker 2: of Nature the Red List listen as threatened species. The
Speaker 2: European eels are critically endangered, and the American, Japanese and
Speaker 2: New Zealand long fin eels are endangered.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm screaming out. Yeah I could see that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're endangered.
Speaker 2: And then some of this other stuff to come was
Speaker 2: a pretty big turn off for me as far as
Speaker 2: eating them goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that puts me off of eating eels.
Speaker 3: Hey, no pressure bud.
Speaker 2: American and European eel populations have dropped by more than
Speaker 2: ninety percent since the nineteen seventies, same with Japanese eel populations.
Speaker 2: Hydropower turbines and dams is a big reason. We know
Speaker 2: that they disrupt all sorts of underwater aquatic life, but
Speaker 2: also overfishing, the loss of wetlands and pollution.
Speaker 3: So they you know, the eels that you eat.
Speaker 2: And this almost got me back on it. They're raised
Speaker 2: in aquaculture facilities. They aren't bread in captivity because it's
Speaker 2: really hard to do as obviously that we've seen. Their
Speaker 2: reproduction is pretty tricky overall, so if they were to
Speaker 2: try and do that, they would have to introduce hormones
Speaker 2: to induce sexual development. Keeping those larvae alive is really
Speaker 2: difficult in captivity just because of the organic matter that
Speaker 2: exists in the wild, like they really need that stuff.
Speaker 2: So what they do is they capture those little glass
Speaker 2: eels in the wild and bring them to the farms
Speaker 2: to raise them to maturity so you can.
Speaker 1: Eat them right. And one of the reasons, maybe the
Speaker 1: reason that American and European eels have dropped by ninety
Speaker 1: percent since the seventies is that when you're taking these
Speaker 1: glass eels out of the ocean. Number one, you're preventing
Speaker 1: that same number of eels from ever growing up to
Speaker 1: reproduce because they're going to get eaten before they get
Speaker 1: a chance to. And two, if eels follow any kind
Speaker 1: of typical evolutionary strategy, they probably have a ton of
Speaker 1: larva and a huge percentage of them die off, and
Speaker 1: the glass eels are the ones that make it so
Speaker 1: what you're doing is saying, like, thanks for the surviving larva, everybody,
Speaker 1: We're going to take them and eat them. So that
Speaker 1: prevents an entire species from reproducing for the most part,
Speaker 1: and that's why their stocks have died off from those fisheries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, don't I think we skip the part where like,
Speaker 2: didn't they tag eels to track them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how they found out Rosalind Wright in twenty
Speaker 1: eight That's how they found out. But yeah, I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention that part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy to tag a little eel. Maine, the US
Speaker 2: state of Maine is the only state that has a
Speaker 2: glass eel fishing industry. They have license what they're called
Speaker 2: elverman because remember the elvers is the third to I guess,
Speaker 2: the penultimate stage, and there are four hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: five licensed elvermen that can harvest around seventy five hundred
Speaker 2: pounds between late March and early June every year, and
Speaker 2: then they ship it off to Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Very nice. Do you know what the third to last
Speaker 1: is called?
Speaker 3: Oh is that a word for that? Are you about
Speaker 3: to dupe me?
Speaker 1: No? This is for real, chuck, I promise, Okay, what
Speaker 1: it's anti penultimate but like ante, like anti chamber antipenultimate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like that. That always reminds me. And I think
Speaker 2: I mentioned this in the Gary Larson episode the second
Speaker 2: to the last of the Mohicans cartoon, Yeah, which is
Speaker 2: just a big line of indigenous I guess Mohicans and
Speaker 2: the second the last of the one in line. Everyone's
Speaker 2: facing one way and he just turned around and waving
Speaker 2: and smiling.
Speaker 1: How great, man? YEI guy, you got anything else about eels?
Speaker 3: No, that's it?
Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, If you want to know more about eels,
Speaker 1: I go watch videos about David Byrne and see what
Speaker 1: books he recommends. You can also visit your local aquarium.
Speaker 1: You can also go online and visit the website of
Speaker 1: your local aquarium. There's all sorts of stuff you can
Speaker 1: do to learn more about eels. And I urge you too,
Speaker 1: and maybe stop eating them. I'm going to too, Okay, Chuck, really,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stop eating American or European eels for sure.
Speaker 3: All right, No more unagi for us.
Speaker 1: No, it's been a while since I had it anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's a huge given loss me.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, since Chuck agreed, that we're both going
Speaker 1: to give up. Eel, It's time for listener now.
Speaker 2: This is from Alex and this is a follow up
Speaker 2: about the baking soda and coconut oil deodorant from the
Speaker 2: listener mail. Apparently Alex is sort of an expert on this,
Speaker 2: so okay, again, you don't tread carefully whenever you're applying
Speaker 2: anything to your skin and body.
Speaker 1: Can you refresh my memory? I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Deodorant basically like baking soda and coconut oil, if you
Speaker 2: mix together into a paste, can be a good like
Speaker 2: natural deodorant, Okay, but it can also like chafe your
Speaker 2: skin and cause outbreaks if you don't get the mix right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this is what Alex says.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this for the better part of fifteen years, guys,
Speaker 2: and have continuously adjusted the recipe to balance what I
Speaker 2: found to be three main factors, odor eliminating effectiveness, skin reaction,
Speaker 2: and staining of clothing. Baking soda is responsible for the
Speaker 2: first two and needs to be carefully balanced to be
Speaker 2: effective enough while not causing a rash. Coconut oil is
Speaker 2: commonly used to act as a concentration, reduction and application medium.
Speaker 3: But it stains the clothes.
Speaker 2: I found that corn starch is an x is excellent
Speaker 2: and being a neutral alternative. To reduce a concentration of
Speaker 2: the baking soda, I usually go about equal volumes of
Speaker 2: the two, then add only enough coconut oil to make
Speaker 2: a thick paste in a pinch. If I find myself
Speaker 2: having forgotten to use deodorant, I will moisten my finger
Speaker 2: and dab it directly in baking soda so that it
Speaker 2: is only very lightly dusted, and then rub that on
Speaker 2: my armpits. But don't do that too often, guys, you'll
Speaker 2: end up with unhappy pits.
Speaker 3: But it's a great.
Speaker 2: Backup because most people have a box of baking powder
Speaker 2: open in the fridge and don't care about fingers in
Speaker 2: it because it's not there for eating. A girlfriend from
Speaker 2: another lifetime once told me I should start an armpit empire.
Speaker 2: And by the way, guys, I'm in Puerto Rico, so
Speaker 2: if you ever feel like coming to do a show
Speaker 2: in the tropics, would be the first one out telling
Speaker 2: everyone to buy tickets.
Speaker 3: And that is Alex.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Alex. Can you just see Alex dipping
Speaker 1: his fingers in some baking soda and rubbing him on
Speaker 1: his arm pit and saying, ah, refreshed.
Speaker 3: I can just see it.
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Alex and give us
Speaker 1: even more detail about a whatever it is you know
Speaker 1: a lot about, we would love that. You can send
Speaker 1: it to us at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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