Eels Shouldn’t be Able to Exist
I didn’t know this about eels:
No one has ever seen an eel reproduce naturally. Not in the wild, not in captivity, not even once. And yet, eels are everywhere. In rivers, in lakes, in oceans, slippery, ancient, and inexplicably present.
For centuries, the world’s greatest thinkers tried to solve the mystery of the eel. Aristotle thought they emerged from mud. Others believe they simply appeared, formed by sunlight and dew. Even today, there’s only one place on Earth where we think all eels are born: somewhere deep in the Atlantic where mysteriously no adult eel has ever been found.
So why are eels like this? What evolutionary advantage lies in such an impossibly complex journey? And why does their life cycle still defy so much of what we know about biology? This isn’t just a story about a fish. It’s a story about a creature that breaks the rules of science.
I found this via Frank Chimero’s short essay on eels.
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Reader recommendations: the work of Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee "on the role of eels in pre-modern England from the tenth through the seventeenth centuries" and The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson. (thx, lisa & emily!)
Totally missed that my rec was already covered by others--sorry! I'll leave it up for the added context, but needless to say, +1
But if eels didn’t exist, the crossword puzzle industry would collapse.
(IYKYK)
Crossword puzzles are quite EELY
We have a Swedish neighbor who gifted me this book. STRONG recommend. The Smithsonian Magazine blurb does well to capture it: "...part memoir and part scientific detective story." Very much in the mold of Steven Johnson's, The Ghost Map, with a bit more personal reflection a la Norman Maclean's, A River Runs Through It.
Another recommendation: this New Yorker article from 2020 about eels—which I think also is a review of the Patrik Svensson book. Clearly gotta read that book!
It may be worth specifying that these claims are related to a specific type of eel - Anguilla anguilla aka the Anguilla eel or European eel. The life cycle of other types of eel (there are many types) is well described. Other eels have documented and described reproductive organs and some eels have been reproduced in captivity.
In October 2024 Tim Blais at A Capella Science posted a video, "Sargasso" (a parody of Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso") about the mysterious mating habits of anguilla eels - "We've failed to reveal eel mating and the / Proof in the puddin' nobody can make em breed no":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN148WQ2OQ
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