Masters of Electricity (The Video Version)

This week I wrote my New York Times columnmy New York Times columnmy New York Times column about one of those remarkable studies that makes you realize how little we understand about the natural world. Ken Catania, a biologist at Vanderbilt University, performed some elegantly simple experiments that revealed that electric eels use electricity as a taser and as a remote control for their prey.

To read mostly straight-text accounts of the research, you can read my column, as well as fellow Phenom Ed Yong’s blog post. But the video that Catania filmed as part of his research is so interesting I thought offer a moving-pictures recap here.

Here’s what it’s like when an eel goes after

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