eels
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Electric Eels Inspired the First Battery 200 Years Ago, so Come Save Us Now Slithery Friends
As the world’s need for large amounts of portable energy grows at an ever-increasing pace, many innovators have sought to replace current battery technology with something better. Italian physicist Alessandro Volta tapped into fundamental electrochemical principles when he invented the first battery in 1800. Essentially, the physical joining of two different materials, usually metals, generates…
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Here’s What That ‘Faceless Fish’ Actually Is
Life gets pretty weird in the cold abyss of the deep sea. One deep ocean oddity presented itself to researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) just the other day — the strange beast has now been referred to dozens of times as the “faceless fish”. While the nickname is pretty fitting, this…
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Leaping Electric Eels Resolve A Centuries-Old Mystery
In his writings, naturalist and intrepid explorer Alexander von Humboldt recounted how natives in Venezuela used horses to lure and trap electric eels. Many scientists thought it was just a tall tale, but a new paper lends credence to Humboldt’s account of eels aggressively leaping up and stunning the horses with a series of high-voltage…