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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Tucklas. Julie.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to share a story that I read about

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Speaker 1: and uh that that I frequently come back to him

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Speaker 1: in my mind, and that uh, this takes place a

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Speaker 1: few years before the death of Marlon Brando. This is

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Speaker 1: a fictional story. This is apparently a true story according

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Speaker 1: to ed Baby Jr. Um So it's a few years

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Speaker 1: before Brando's death. I think, uh, who died in two

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Speaker 1: thousand four. Of course, everyone's coming with Brando for The

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Speaker 1: Godfather Apocalypse now, um countless other films to Moro's island. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I mean he's he was. He was a

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Speaker 1: crazy man and uh and his uh he was an

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Speaker 1: incredibly talented actor. But he was in some really bad

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Speaker 1: films as well some really good ones. He was in

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Speaker 1: some really scandalous films. I mean he he was. He

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Speaker 1: was a perfect Hollywood icon in every respect. But a

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Speaker 1: few years before he died, he summoned actor environmentalist At

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Speaker 1: Bagley Junior to his Mulholland Drive estate and according to

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Speaker 1: to Bagley, Brando wanted some feedback on a scheme to

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Speaker 1: power his home with electric eels, and I guess he

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Speaker 1: you know, he contacted vaguely out of the blue, because

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Speaker 1: Baguley was, you know, it was and still is into

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Speaker 1: all sorts of green energy, environmentalism, and it would seem

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Speaker 1: like the kind of guy you would ask about this.

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Speaker 1: But Baguley was, of course dumbfounded by this because he's

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Speaker 1: he's not an advocate or was not an advocate of

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Speaker 1: powering your house with electric eels. So he told Brando,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure that can be done. I've never heard

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Speaker 1: of anybody doing that. And uh And according to to

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Speaker 1: at Bagley Junior, Brando grumbled, everything's no with you, and

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Speaker 1: then and then dismissed him as I want to know

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Speaker 1: what else was no with Ed Begley Jr. It was

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Speaker 1: so disappointed in him for ye it was it. It

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Speaker 1: was it weekly calls to say, all right, how about this,

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Speaker 1: how about Woodchuck's. Can wood Chuck's power my house? And

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Speaker 1: it's like, I don't think that's possible. It's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you won't allow anything, Baguley. What's the matter with you?

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Speaker 1: You're such such a negative force. In my life, Bagley.

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Speaker 1: You know there's an aquarium in Japan that actually used

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Speaker 1: electric eels to power a Christmas tree. I've seen this.

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Speaker 1: The video is pretty impressive. Of course. One of the

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Speaker 1: things here and and ultimately the reason that that Baguley

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Speaker 1: was not able to say yes to Mr Brando is

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Speaker 1: that it's only powering that that Christmas tree in bursts.

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Speaker 1: It's capable of the electric eel, which is actually not

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Speaker 1: an eel but a type of camorative of the catfish,

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Speaker 1: can pump out an alarming amount of electricity, but in

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Speaker 1: short burst because this has evolved us as a means

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Speaker 1: of ultimately evolved as a means for the electric eel

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Speaker 1: to to stun prey or potential predators, not to power

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Speaker 1: Christmas tree lights or fancy Hollywood homes. Oh well, you

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Speaker 1: know you can't blame him for thinking it up right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, humans have been messing around with electric fish

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Speaker 1: for quite some time. Um. It's true. Roman Emperor Charles

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Speaker 1: the fifth reputedly died from indigestion after eating an eel pie.

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Speaker 1: So someone thought that that was a good idea to

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Speaker 1: have a little electric eel pie heard that one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Dutch Society of Sciences published a set of treatises

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Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty two espousing the use of electric eels

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Speaker 1: to cure headache pain. Yeah. I've also I read that

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Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian used the torpedo, an electric marine ray

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Speaker 1: in an early form of electrotherapy to tweet to tweet epilepsy.

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Speaker 1: I give props to that one a little bit, you

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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, well, you know they were

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Speaker 1: they were sort of onto something there. Yeah. I like

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Speaker 1: that when I could see that one picking back up again. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, animal rights issues and notwithstanding, I was thinking

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Speaker 1: in post apocalyptic scenario which electric eels and humans survived.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and you carry one around in a tank

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Speaker 1: on your back. Um yeah. Another interesting case in Victorian times,

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Speaker 1: parties were apparently organized and guests would form a chain

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Speaker 1: to experience the shock of an electric fish. Because this

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Speaker 1: is there's something marvelous about this. Here is this animal,

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Speaker 1: this fish, the simple fish, and it is producing this uh,

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Speaker 1: this this product that powers our world. That's what I

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Speaker 1: love about the Victorian ages. I feel like they sort

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Speaker 1: of finally peeled up their eyelids or had enough technology

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Speaker 1: and knowledge that they were really starting to look at

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Speaker 1: biology and and particularly looking at um creatures in the

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Speaker 1: sea and finding out how wonderful and majestic and weird

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Speaker 1: they were. So I can only imagine this sort of

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Speaker 1: excitement that must have been. You know, where is that

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Speaker 1: we have our steampunk in various related punks. Where is

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Speaker 1: our electric eel punk? That could be a whole setting again.

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Speaker 1: You know Victorian individuals walking around a tank on their

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Speaker 1: back with an electric eel in it or two h

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Speaker 1: somehow empowering their gadgets. There you go. We also have

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Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin and other pioneering sign just using yield electric

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Speaker 1: eels to learn about electricity, so we can thank electric eels.

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Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here are electrogenic organisms um

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Speaker 1: and uh and it's and it's interesting the the electric

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Speaker 1: eel gets most of the credit because it it is

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Speaker 1: the most impressive example of an electrogenic organism, but we

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Speaker 1: actually see quite a few fish with this power. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are more than thirty thousand total fish species out

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Speaker 1: there in the world, but upwards of three and fifty

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Speaker 1: are electrogenic, right, so they're not that many. However, here

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Speaker 1: in the Amazon, then you're going to see many more

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Speaker 1: of them, and it's sort of a common thing. Um,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, across the boarder there are not a ton

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Speaker 1: of them, but there are six different lineages, I believe.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's a kind of thing that it's not

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Speaker 1: like it involved in in one place. It involved Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're covergently in different spots across the globe. Yeah. Now

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Speaker 1: they generate their own electrical field using a specialized organ

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Speaker 1: and as you say, that's called electrogenic. And then fish

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Speaker 1: that can detect electric fields are called electro receptive. Now

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that because they're electroc receptive, they're actually electrogenic. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is sort of like you know, a test right here.

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Speaker 1: It's not you know, that doesn't automatically make that. It

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Speaker 1: just means that they are a little bit more receptive

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Speaker 1: to that field. Yeah. So we have this passive electro

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Speaker 1: reception which evolves so that fish could detect weak, naturally

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Speaker 1: occurring bioelectric signals, uh, you know, in their in their

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Speaker 1: aquatic environments. And according to Markie Nelson and Current Biology,

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Speaker 1: electrogenic organs which which we're gonna talk about here, Um,

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Speaker 1: they properly originated with a set of highly active skeletal

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Speaker 1: muscles that generated sufficient electrical activity to be detectable by

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Speaker 1: the fishes own electro receptors. And then this is used

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Speaker 1: then for navigat ation and communication, which we still see

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Speaker 1: as being the primary purpose and a lot of electric fish.

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Speaker 1: But then in some cases this evolves into a strong

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Speaker 1: electric um field that's used by strong electric fish to stunt, prey,

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Speaker 1: and or protect themselves. So we see this this evolution

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Speaker 1: of this uh, this electric potential in in in these creatures.

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Speaker 1: And it's important to remember that we're also taught we're

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Speaker 1: altom only talking about the evolution of muscle tissue here,

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Speaker 1: and even in a simple human, our muscles are bioelectric essentially,

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Speaker 1: so it's it's not like this is something that just

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Speaker 1: came out of the blue that's some sort of a

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Speaker 1: magical property. It's just the escalation of of of the

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Speaker 1: bioelectric nature of muscle tissue itself. Yeah, and we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about that in a bit about how this actually works.

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Speaker 1: But I wanted to through out there that some strongly

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Speaker 1: electric fish are found in the oceans, including the electric

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Speaker 1: star gazer also code astro scoopus, in certain skates in

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Speaker 1: rays such as the torpedo ray still have fresh water habitats,

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Speaker 1: including the South American electric eel electrophorus in the African

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Speaker 1: electric catfish a metapataurists. Most weakly electric fish are found

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Speaker 1: in freshwater rivers of African South America, and some species

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Speaker 1: of marine gates and rays are also weakly electric, so

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Speaker 1: they're widely dispersed. Yeah. Some of the the the weaker

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Speaker 1: electric fish are actually really interesting and I think are

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Speaker 1: often overlooked. For instance, there's Peter's elephant nose fish that

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Speaker 1: has this weird little UH levels looks like a little

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Speaker 1: elephant trunk or some sort of you know, extra long nose,

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Speaker 1: but it's not a nose. It's a sensitive mouth extension

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Speaker 1: covered with electro receptors and UH. And the creature it

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Speaker 1: has poor eyesight and it uses a weak electric field

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Speaker 1: which it generates UH with the with these with these

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Speaker 1: specialized cells to find food, navigate all in this dark

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Speaker 1: uh environment. Yeah, and I thought that was interesting that

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Speaker 1: it used it in place of eyes to do that

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Speaker 1: as well as to communicate sometimes like mating signals. Mating

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Speaker 1: signals play heavily into the into its usage among these

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Speaker 1: these these weaker electric fish. And just to put a

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Speaker 1: voltage on these Uh, these more powerful electric fish that

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Speaker 1: we're talking about here. The electric eel you generally see

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Speaker 1: six hundred volts, sometimes as high as six fifty um.

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Speaker 1: The electric catfish that you mentioned generally up to three

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Speaker 1: fifty volts, and electric rays, of which they're sixty nine

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Speaker 1: species eight to two volts. Yeah. Now those electric eels

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Speaker 1: six hundred volts. That's five times the power of a

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Speaker 1: standard US wall socket. So if anybody has ever as

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Speaker 1: a child or even as an adult, you know, put

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Speaker 1: your finger in a wall socket or put like a

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Speaker 1: Christmas ornament in there, then you can sort of understand

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Speaker 1: the sort of jolt that you would get on the

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Speaker 1: other side of that. In fact, that would pretty much

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Speaker 1: like lay out a human being for a little while. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: now we're talking as it can be a big creature.

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Speaker 1: We're talking six to eight feet in link. But still

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Speaker 1: it's I think it's it's easy to forget that they

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Speaker 1: do pack that much of a punch. It's easy to think,

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Speaker 1: all electric fish, how how powerful could it be? How

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Speaker 1: much electricity could have fished generate? And it it basically

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Speaker 1: comes out to what ten volts per foot of fish. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: according to Michael Sussman, who directs the Biotechnology Center at

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Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin. A six foot long electric eel

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Speaker 1: is basically I love this description, a six inch fish

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Speaker 1: attached to a five and a half foot cattle prod.

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Speaker 1: And that all those intestines and stomachs and all that

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Speaker 1: stuff is right like right up close to the head.

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Speaker 1: So the rest of the electric eel is essentially an

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Speaker 1: electric organ. It's like of that um of that electric

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Speaker 1: eel's weight is the electric organ. Yeah. I love the

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Speaker 1: way you put that, Like, basically six inch fish with

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Speaker 1: a bunch of electricity producing meat attached to it. This

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Speaker 1: is something that I recently did a blog post about

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Speaker 1: the monster the week post about the character Blanca from

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Speaker 1: the Street Fighter Games, which is kind of this green

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Speaker 1: ape that has the ability to shock an aquatic a. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That's my theory is because you would have to be

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Speaker 1: aquatic because you only see this kind of uh, you

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Speaker 1: only see electrogenic behavior in aquatic creatures. They needed that

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Speaker 1: they need the water as a conductor. But but yeah,

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Speaker 1: he produces the shock, and so I was trying to

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Speaker 1: sort of do the math. I was thinking, well, how

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Speaker 1: much if if an eel is doing uh, can volt

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Speaker 1: per foot then how much electricity would a man sized

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Speaker 1: eight creature generate? But it kind of breaks down when

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Speaker 1: you realize, all right, well this look how muscular this

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Speaker 1: eight is. Like how much spare tissue does a blank

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Speaker 1: I have for the generation of electricity and and to

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Speaker 1: and to to simply waste to spend on the specialized cells.

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Speaker 1: Not that much? So um, yeah, believe it, so believe

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Speaker 1: it or not, it's really difficult to to break down

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Speaker 1: the hard science of how this ridiculous creature from a

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Speaker 1: video game would work. It's still interesting and I think

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Speaker 1: sort of view into how this has become so specialized.

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Speaker 1: And uh, I wanted just to mention that the organs

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Speaker 1: tissue is a lot like muscle, but it can't contract,

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Speaker 1: all right, And we'll talk more about them the second.

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Speaker 1: The cells are big and they have all sorts of

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Speaker 1: features that let them pump out electricity without shocking the fish,

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Speaker 1: and the cells are stacked together like batteries in a

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Speaker 1: flashlight firing simultaneously, So that kind of gives you an

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Speaker 1: idea of that process that's happening internally. The crazy thing

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Speaker 1: about the electric eels that it is kind of I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a really souped up creature like it's spent

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Speaker 1: so much of its biology is committed to this uh

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Speaker 1: this uh offensive defensive mechanism. But it has kind of

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Speaker 1: made it almost undefeatable. I mean, it's really not a

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Speaker 1: threatened organism, you know, except by by humans who have

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Speaker 1: removed themselves from the game entirely for the most part. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that idea of souped up like a monster truck,

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Speaker 1: but instead of you know, giant wheels, trying that like

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Speaker 1: giant stacked up batteries. Because as you had said, all

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Speaker 1: muscle cells have that electrical potential, and you know, you

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Speaker 1: just have a simple contraction of a muscle and you

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Speaker 1: get a little bit of voltage. But Lindsay Trigger, a

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Speaker 1: biologists who works in suspens lab, says that if you

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Speaker 1: remove the ability of the muscle cell to contract as

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Speaker 1: we say, this happens electric eels, and you change the

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Speaker 1: distribution of proteins in the cell membrane. Now all they

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Speaker 1: do is push ions across a membrane to create a

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Speaker 1: massive flow of positive charge. And they've been able to

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Speaker 1: do this because they've had about a hundred million years

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Speaker 1: to specialize these muscle cells into larger cells which are

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Speaker 1: called electro sites. Now the whole you know, they're pumping

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Speaker 1: out this electricity, and you mentioned how they they largely

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Speaker 1: avoid shopping shocking themselves. This was really fascinating. According to Markey,

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Speaker 1: Nelson and Current Biology, the strongly of electric fish, such

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Speaker 1: as the electric eel, they do have these layers of

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Speaker 1: adipose and connective tissue that help electrically insulate their vital

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Speaker 1: organs uh and in the electric current that they produced

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Speaker 1: by the discharge, they tend to follow the path of

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Speaker 1: least resistance, so they flow around rather than through these

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Speaker 1: tissues UM. Researchers have observed electric eels sometimes twitching in

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Speaker 1: response to their own discharge, so it's it's not perfect.

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Speaker 1: There's like sometimes those electrical UH currents that they're generating

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Speaker 1: are going to to tweak their own tissue um and,

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Speaker 1: and the fine timing of this mechanism is pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: There's a when when researchers have looked at electric fish,

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Speaker 1: they they found that the pacemaker nucleus that controls the

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Speaker 1: timing of the electric organ discharges is one of the

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Speaker 1: most temporarily precise biological oscillators ever measured, So they in

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Speaker 1: a sense electric fish like the electric eel, very precise timekeepers,

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Speaker 1: and they have they have pretty large brain to body

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Speaker 1: size ratios, So so some researchers speculator, these are pretty

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Speaker 1: smart creatures. Yeah, that's interesting that the out of post

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Speaker 1: that Fat is helping again is the installation UM salesmen

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Speaker 1: and other scientists. They sided that they wanted to figure

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Speaker 1: out how this kind of happened as much as they could, right,

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Speaker 1: and they analyze all the genes of the electric eel,

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Speaker 1: and then they looked at gene activity in other electric

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Speaker 1: fishes or fish from unrelated families, and they found that

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Speaker 1: six different species evolved independent systems for electric organs using

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Speaker 1: the same genetic toolbox. So we're talking about the same

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Speaker 1: set of thirty genes. And if I'm understanding this correctly,

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Speaker 1: it's that each of these six species were in a

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Speaker 1: way recreating the wheel for themselves as opposed to using

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Speaker 1: a blueprint, which I thought was surprising because usually when

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Speaker 1: we think about evolution, we think about evolution using that

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Speaker 1: blueprint because it's much easier. And for instance, you know

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Speaker 1: we've got our five fingers, and um, you'll see this

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Speaker 1: structure of bones and fingers and arms in many mammals

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Speaker 1: over and over again, so that it was very interesting

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Speaker 1: to know that there's a more of a lego rogue

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Speaker 1: lego approach on this, allowing each species to kind of

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Speaker 1: tweak their electric organs as needed. So what does this

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Speaker 1: mean for the future, Because I know that out there

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Speaker 1: listening to us right now, Brando's ghost wants to know

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Speaker 1: when when electric eels are really going to to help

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Speaker 1: out around the house um or even inside, uh, the

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Speaker 1: human body, right So and it you know, it turns

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Speaker 1: out that researchers are looking into this. Researchers from Yale

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Speaker 1: University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They

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Speaker 1: actually envision synthetic eel cells with improved energy efficiency bundled

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Speaker 1: altogether in a bio battery. So we're not yet quite

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Speaker 1: to the point where we could we could build artificial

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Speaker 1: versions of complex cells, but the researchers have created a

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Speaker 1: simplified battery based on the principles of the electric eel.

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Speaker 1: Two artificial cells, each containing a salt solution with a

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Speaker 1: lipid wall. If the salt concentrations are different than poking

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Speaker 1: the cells produces a slight charge. So laying the groundwork

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Speaker 1: for the future of an electric eel ish bio battery.

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Speaker 1: I hope they call it a Brando battery. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: that lipid wall, I guess would be the thing that

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Speaker 1: insulates it, right like that out of past tissue think

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Speaker 1: so yeah, very cool. And then another possible use for this,

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Speaker 1: and this comes from biot just Lindsay Tragger who who

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Speaker 1: was a part of that study we were discussing earlier,

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Speaker 1: to to look at the genome of the electric eel um.

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Speaker 1: According to her, we may reach the day where we

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Speaker 1: could actually have a little electric organs uh built in

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Speaker 1: to say a pacemaker to power it inside the human body.

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Speaker 1: So so again it's kind of the bio body princess,

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Speaker 1: the bio battery principle, except taking place with at much

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Speaker 1: smaller scale inside the human body as a part of

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Speaker 1: a pacemaker or other implanted medical device. And the reason

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Speaker 1: you want to do this is that means that you

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Speaker 1: don't have to undergo all these invasive procedures to replace

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Speaker 1: the batteries or the peacemaker ideally, right, And I love

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Speaker 1: this idea. I just can't quite square it yet, Like

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this organ in folding the pacemaker and

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Speaker 1: it but it's you know, it's been engineered to be

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Speaker 1: this electric organ coexisting in a human body where there

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Speaker 1: are weak electric fields. So you know what I'm saying, Like,

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Speaker 1: I can't quite see how that would work yet, because

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Speaker 1: you really have to in creating a bioelectric cybernetic organ

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Speaker 1: you really have to then take into account that you're

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Speaker 1: in planning it into a human which is still essentially

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Speaker 1: a bioelectric organism itself. And how do you square all

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Speaker 1: that away? It seems to get pretty complicated pretty fast.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, we're already putting battery powered electronic devices

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Speaker 1: inside a human body, so so eventually, right, yeah, we'll

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Speaker 1: leave it to the scientists. Yeah, and I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's promising science. So Mr Brando, wherever you are, um

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Speaker 1: Ed Bagley Jr. May say no, but we're gonna go

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Speaker 1: ahead and give a attentative yes on this issue. All right, Um,

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Speaker 1: do you guys have thoughts on this? Have you ever

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Speaker 1: seen an electric eel in person? Have you been shocked

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Speaker 1: by one? Do you throw Victorian retro parties and try

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Speaker 1: this party trick out? Let us know and and if indeed,

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Speaker 1: if you have any examples of electric eel punk literature

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Speaker 1: UM films comic books, etcetera. I'd love to know about

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Speaker 1: it because because I feel like that is a largely

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Speaker 1: ignored area of possibility there. So where can you find us?

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Speaker 1: Where can you look up all of our podcasts, our videos,

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Speaker 1: are blog posts, et cetera. You can find us at

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind dot com. That is the homepage,

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Speaker 1: that's the mother's ship. You'll also find links out to

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Speaker 1: our various social media accounts there, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

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Speaker 1: our YouTube account which is Mine Stuff Show. And there's

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Speaker 1: still an old fashioned way to get in touch with us.

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Speaker 1: So what what can they do to if they want

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Speaker 1: to hook the old computer up to an electric eel

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Speaker 1: and uh blasted out and an email? Well, if you

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Speaker 1: do that successfully, and I hope that you do, you

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Speaker 1: can send that email to blow the mind at how

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Speaker 1: staff works dot com for more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com