Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Eels Alive! About this episode Eels are pretty much objectively unsettling. They’re not quite fish (although they are) and if they’re snakes, they’re messed up snakes (they aren’t). But they’re fascinating too! There are even little cute eels. It’s time you got acquainted with eels!
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1:27 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:37 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know about eels.
1:45 Speaker 02 I know, another podcast that has ruined something I like to eat, but now I can't.
1:51 Josh Clark? What did it ruin? Or why? How? What? What part? How about this? When we get to the part where you're like, this ruined eel for me, shout. Scream at the top of your lungs.
2:02 Speaker 02 Okay.
2:03 Josh Clark? Okay. I want to give a hat tip to David Byrne via Yumi, who inspired this episode.
2:12 Speaker 02 The David Byrne?
2:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, the David Byrne. Yumi was watching David Byrne videos. He's on tour and I think she's going to see him.
2:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a great show.
2:20 Josh Clark? Have you seen it?
2:20 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. I've seen the last couple of tours. It's, it's great.
2:23 Josh Clark? Awesome. So, um, he apparently was talking about a book he was reading about eels and how fascinating it was. So that kicked off the idea for an episode on eels.
2:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, I went to read a new book. I just finished my book Cameron Crowe's memoir, which is fantastic.
2:41 Josh Clark? I'm sure.
2:41 Speaker 02 Uh, and by the way, I commented on his Instagram about what a great book it was and he started following me.
2:47 Josh Clark? No.
2:48 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I, I gotta think that it was either an accident or maybe he like listens to stuff you should know. I don't see why he would randomly just be like, I'll follow anyone who says they like my book.
2:59 Josh Clark? Right.
3:00 Speaker 02 So I don't know. Cameron Crowe, if you're listening, it's pretty exciting for us.
3:03 Josh Clark? Yeah. What up?
3:05 Speaker 02 Uh, great book though. His, his memoir is just, it's almost too incredible to believe that that happened to him in his life.
3:11 Josh Clark? Is it called Recounting Crowe?
3:13 Speaker 02 Oh, boy. No. It's called The Uncool, but man, you've really missed an opportunity there.
3:20 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think more he dodged a bullet.
3:23 Speaker 02 Uh, probably so. But I went to read a new book, uh, Talking Heads. It was, I had two books in my hand. The Talking Heads book and Abel Ferrara's, uh, memoir, The Filmmaker. And I went with the Abel Ferrara, just, uh, because Bonnie Prince Billy recommended it and it's shorter, but Talking Heads is up next. And that's it.
3:43 Josh Clark? I, um, I just watched Bad Lieutenant all the way through for the first time. I'm like, this is a good movie.
3:49 Speaker 02 Buddy, what a film.
3:51 Josh Clark? I've got King of New York next.
3:53 Speaker 02 Uh, so are you on a kick now for him?
3:56 Josh Clark? A little bit, yeah.
3:56 Speaker 02 Where'd that come from? Bunny Prince Billy?
4:01 Josh Clark? Yeah. Uh, no, I don't remember. I think I just ran across Bad Lieutenant and I've known about it since I was a teenager and has never really watched it.
4:09 Speaker 02 Oh, have you ever seen King of New York?
4:11 Josh Clark? No.
4:12 Speaker 02 Oh dude, it's so good.
4:14 Josh Clark? Oh, good. I can't wait.
4:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, he's, he's, he's one of my favorite filmmakers.
4:19 Josh Clark? Great. Yeah, apparently there's lots of rumors that Harvey Keitel actually was on all the drugs he was supposed to be on on Bad Lieutenant.
4:26 Speaker 02 I'll let you know when I get to that chapter.
4:28 Josh Clark? And I saw someone say like, no, he actually wasn't. He's just that good of an actor. But that Abel Ferrara and the rest of the crew probably were on all those same drugs while they were shooting it.
4:39 Speaker 02 I know he was, he was pretty into drugs. So I have, I've only a couple of chapters in so far, but it's really good.
4:46 Josh Clark? Okay. Well, when you get to the chapter called Drugs, colon, I love them. Let me know.
4:52 Speaker 02 All right. All that to say is that we're talking about eels. And we'll get right into it. If you, if you're an eel, if you want to claim to be an eel, you, you gotta have certain qualifications. You can't just be like a sea snake or an electric eel, which isn't an eel, by the way. Uh, you have to be a member of the order Anguilla forms or Anguilla formis. Uh, 20 families of eels, 111 genera, more than 800 species, ranging from just about four inches to those big old moray eels, sometimes up to 12 feet.
5:25 Josh Clark? Yeah. 12 foot long eel. That's just amazing.
5:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:29 Josh Clark? The one thing that they all have in common is that they have long bodies that are typically worm-like. Um, they don't have pelvic fins, right? So, um, yeah, the ones that you would have developed had you descended from water hippos.
5:47 Speaker 02 That's right.
5:47 Josh Clark? Like whales. A lot of them don't have pectoral fins. Some of them do have the dorsal fin on the back, but essentially they're just like worms or snakes like slithering through the water. And that actually is exactly what they're doing. They're slithering in a wave-like motion. That's how they make their way. Because again, they don't really have fins. This to me is one of the facts of the podcast. Do you know what I'm talking about?
6:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, take it though.
6:12 Josh Clark? So eels can swim backward just by changing the direction of the wave?
6:19 Speaker 02 It's a reverse.
6:19 Josh Clark? And, yes, they make a beeping sound when they do.
6:22 Speaker 02 Right. Oh, man. That's amazing. I mean, they gotta let everyone know. It's like, I can't, I can't see where I'm going, everyone.
6:30 Josh Clark? Yep.
6:30 Speaker 02 Eel coming through.
6:32 Josh Clark? Yeah. Also, I just want to take a second for a PSA. If you drive a truck that makes a beeping sound when it backs up, never, ever just sit there idling with your
6:44 Speaker 02 Oh, in reverse?
6:45 Josh Clark? Gear in reverse.
6:46 Speaker 02 Oh, God. Do people do that?
6:47 Josh Clark? You're not allowed to do that. Yes. You mean, I, you used to live next to, it was like a nursing home, I guess. And they, like, we lived on the side of their, like, delivery area. And dudes would just do that. Just sit there with, in, with their truck in reverse, not moving.
7:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:05 Josh Clark? At like 6:00 in the morning.
7:06 Speaker 02 That's not allowed.
7:07 Josh Clark? No.
7:08 Speaker 02 All right. I agree. Eels have that smooth, slippery skin, and it is coated in a slime. It's a protective slime. It helps them with their swimming. It makes them very streamlined. And it also helps regulate how much water is in their bodies, which is pretty unusual. And they're predatory. Like, they're, they're eating other fish, basically, while they're down there.
7:29 Josh Clark? Yeah. What does, something else that's very neat about eels is that they don't, like, they're not born little baby eels, and then they grow up into big 12-foot-long, 250-pound eels. They actually go through stages of metamorphosis, like a butterfly does.
7:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:44 Josh Clark? They don't look anything like an eel when they're born. And as they grow, they actually change shape and color in addition to size. They also very frequently will move from, like, the ocean to freshwater creeks far inland. Like, there's a lot of great stuff that eels do that we just
8:05 Josh Clark? Had overlooked for a very long time.
8:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, there's some fun, really fun stuff coming. They're, they're basically solitary. I think there's a couple that we'll talk about later that, that hang out in the hundreds or thousands. But generally, like if you're a eel of size, you're going to be swimming around by yourself, backing up by yourself, beeping by yourself. They migrate and, you know, we'll talk more about how they spawn later because it was a bit of a mystery for a long, long time and still kind of is in some ways.
8:33 Josh Clark? Yeah.
8:33 Speaker 02 But they do migrate to a spawning area and they think they use the earth's magnetic fields. They use magnetite in their bodies to navigate.
8:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, and they're not the only animals that do. So we don't know for a fact. We just know that there is magnetite in their heads and that, that is probably what's going on because it's so spectacular, the migrations that they undergo. That's essentially the only explanation we have on hand.
9:00 Speaker 02 That's right. If they are in tropical areas, warmer waters, where they migrate to spawn is probably nearish, but if they're in the colder areas, it seems like they migrate to the warmer areas to spawn. So they may have to go a long way.
9:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's like how people in the Caribbean, they don't go on vacation because they live on vacation.
9:18 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:20 Josh Clark? And like you said, electric eels aren't eels and there's really not a whole lot else to say about electric eels, really.
9:26 Speaker 02 No, they're, they're knife fish. They're closer to a catfish than an eel.
9:30 Josh Clark? Sure.
9:30 Speaker 02 So forget those guys.
9:34 Josh Clark? Pretty much. We really look too, we're like electric eels. We got to find out, even though they're not eels, they've got to be kind of interesting. Not really. So sorry, everybody.
9:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, but what is interesting is the moray eel. This is the, the, sort of the most famous of the, of the ocean dwelling eels, the saltwater eels. Member of the family, Mureneidae, 15 genera there, 200 species, makes up about 25% of all the eels. And they live like, you know, if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you probably haven't seen one during the day, but if you've ever gone and put your face in a hidey hole in that coral, maybe you could see one because that's where they like to hide.
10:15 Josh Clark? Yes, be careful though, because they probably will bite you if you stick your face in their hidey hole.
10:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I did that a little bit in Belize. I was asked the snorkel fishing guys with this, they were spearfishing and stuff and I was like, like with spear guns, I was like, can you teach me? They're like, come on, just follow along. And then, you know, he told me, dive down there and put your face in that hole. Tell me what you see.
10:37 Josh Clark? Did he really?
10:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, it was, it was cool. I was like, I was trying to do it like they did it, you know?
10:42 Josh Clark? Sure.
10:42 Speaker 02 But I didn't get anything. They did, but I didn't.
10:45 Josh Clark? Did you see an eel though?
10:47 Speaker 02 No, but it was a little scary to put your face down there, you know?
10:50 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, doing that above ground can be pretty unnerving. Under the sea, that's just scary.
10:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, I felt like Timothy Dalton in Flash Gordon when he reached his hand into that thing.
11:03 Josh Clark? Or, um, I guess Indiana Jones, didn't he do that in one of them? Where he had to stick his arm in there, spiders everywhere?
11:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, there were insects. He had to stick his hand, I think, reaching for a lever or something.
11:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, so great. Uh, one of my favorites are, it's a type of moray, it's called a ribbon eel. Did you look pictures up of these guys?
11:24 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, they're gorgeous.
11:26 Josh Clark? Gorgeous. So they're, um, they are very appropriately named. They're very flat and wide. They do look like ribbons, especially when they're undulating through the water. But one of the cool things is, is that they're born as males, blue and yellow males. And then all of a sudden they go boop, I'm an all yellow female now.
11:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:45 Josh Clark? Check me out. And they can reproduce either way, depending on what phase of life they're in.
11:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're just incredible. Very bright, almost fluorescent, like kind of one of those, you know, undersea colors that just don't feel like they should exist in nature, but it definitely exists in the ocean.
12:02 Josh Clark? Yeah, beautiful.
12:03 Speaker 02 Uh, all right. So there, if you know a moray, you know, they have a great smile. They're known for those, those really scary looking teeth. They have two sets of jaws. The second set, the pharyngeal jaw is faces backwards to kind of lock you in and keep you from escaping if they have you in their grasp.
12:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 02 But they're not, they're not after you. You don't need to be afraid of the moray eel. Like if they, if they get you in the water, it's probably because you're in there at night and it's obviously an accident. They're not like after people.
12:33 Josh Clark? Right. They only get you when you stick your face in their hidey hole.
12:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I guess so.
12:39 Josh Clark? One of the reasons why people are like, man, those things look really aggressive is because they show their teeth a lot. And that's not because they're trying to scare you, or because they're really proud of their teeth. It's because they lack opercula, which are those plate-like covers that go over fish gills, you know, that they kind of go back and forth on.
12:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:57 Josh Clark? Remember like that Monty Python sketch in, what, The Meaning of Life?
13:01 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
13:01 Josh Clark? Where they're goldfish and they're moving their hands?
13:03 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
13:03 Josh Clark? They were simulating opercula. And one of the things opercula does is it regulates and kind of moves water over the gills. Well, the mores don't have that, so they have to get a lot of water through their mouth. And then that's how they funnel the water through the gills. And of course, the gills is where the oxygen is absorbed out of the water into the circulation.
13:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. So that's when you're gonna see the teeth. Like I said, you're you're not gonna get bitten, most likely, but if you do, it's not gonna be fun for you.
13:33 Josh Clark? No.
13:34 Speaker 02 Those teeth are very sharp. It's a very painful bite, apparently, because it punctures very deep. So it can always get like tendons and nerves and stuff. And while they are not venomous, they do that slime, they have slime in their mouths as well. And it's a substance called hemagglutinin. And it causes red blood cells to clump up. But they also, they think they generate something called a crinotoxin. So that destroys red blood cells. So all of that stuff is, A, why it's painful, and it can be like, super prone to infection. Those teeth can break off in your wound. It's really not good.
14:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, I saw crinotoxins also are the reason catfish stings hurt.
14:19 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, I feel like we talked about that in our noodling episode.
14:23 Josh Clark? That makes sense. Yeah, that's like sticking your face in a hidey hole, but using your arm instead of your face.
14:29 Speaker 02 That's right.
14:30 Josh Clark? So the moray is a type of ocean eel and you can kind of divide eels into ocean and freshwater, as we'll see, although ocean eels are far and away the largest in number and type, right?
14:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:46 Josh Clark? One of the other big, I guess, ocean eels is called the conger from family congrede. And they are like deep water dwellers, like 3,000 feet below the surface. Some of them hang out in some rocky areas like morays, maybe around coral reefs. But the thing that's remarkable about the European conger is that that's the heaviest one, right?
15:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're not as long and slender as the moray. They're, they're still long and snake-like, but they're, they're rounder. Like the biggest one recorded as 242 pounds.
15:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
15:22 Speaker 02 Which is, you know, it's, it's a game fish. So if you got a 242 pounder, that's a pretty good catch that day.
15:28 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's like how much a couch weighs.
15:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
15:32 Josh Clark? Oh, I'm so glad I said that because I've been forgetting to mention this. So our dear, awesome friend, Brandon Reed, right?
15:41 Josh Clark? He created, he's our webmaster, everybody. He, he runs and created stuffyoushouldknow.com.
15:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, and pal.
15:48 Josh Clark? Yes, and great, great pal. He created a website called Josh Clark Calculates. And you can go to joshclarkcalculates.com.
15:57 Speaker 02 I didn't know about this.
15:59 Josh Clark? And get this, so you can basically describe anything in a measurement of whatever you want. So somebody is eight Big Macs tall. So you can select Big Macs, Olympic swimming pools, all the stuff that we've ever used to essentially describe the size or shape or volume of something, you can now do on joshclarkcalculates.com.
16:22 Speaker 02 Why, why am I just now learning about this?
16:25 Josh Clark? Because I kept forgetting to mention it and he showed it to me before. I guess he showed it to me in Chicago when he came to the show.
16:31 Speaker 02 All right, I'm looking at it now. Josh Clark calculates the weirdest way to measure absolutely anything.
16:37 Josh Clark? Right.
16:38 Speaker 02 The space, then the example on the homepage is the space shuttle endeavor has the speed of how many washing, washing machines?
16:47 Speaker 02 And you press a button and it says beep boop. The Space Shuttle Endeavour has the speed of 22,778 washing machines.
16:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, and he was telling me like that's like, those are legitimate measurements, like comparisons.
17:00 Speaker 02 Well, this is my new favorite homepage.
17:02 Josh Clark? Isn't that awesome?
17:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's very cool.
17:04 Josh Clark? He is so cool, man. Love Brandon.
17:06 Speaker 02 We'll have to get a band name generator or something going.
17:09 Josh Clark? Oh, that's a good idea, too.
17:10 Speaker 02 All right, that was a lot of fun. I feel like we should take a break. Everyone can go visit that website and calculate some stuff. And we'll be back with more about eels.
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20:26 Josh Clark? Okay, Chuck, we're back, and now we're going to talk about my favorite kind of eel. Is this your favorite kind of eel?
20:31 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, these cute little guys who look like plants.
20:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, so I've seen these before. I had no idea they were eels, but they're like, yeah, little worm-like stems sticking up out of the sandy bottom, waving kind of back and forth with the current. And there's so many of them, it does. It looks like just kind of a field of plants. But if you zoom in, they are these cute little eels with cute little faces.
20:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:55 Josh Clark? Just eating plankton that goes past. And they spend most of their lives cemented in the sandy bottom, even though they're able to get out and move free. That's just kind of where they live. It's also their hidey hole, too.
21:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're called garden eels. And I think when they get startled, they, their whole body goes back in their little burrow.
21:14 Josh Clark? Yeah.
21:15 Speaker 02 But yeah, these are the ones that can hang out together. So it'll look like a little field of seagrass. There'd be thousands of these little guys just waving around.
21:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're so cute, too. Just look up garden eel and look at their little, very serious faces.
21:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. Uh, if you are an eel that's living deep in the ocean, you're not going to be one of the colorful ones. You're probably going to be black or dull gray. And the gulper eel is another one that you should look up when it's safe to do so. This is, it's also called the pelican eel. They're all over the world, basically in tropical and temperate climates. And they are very deep dwellers, like 5,000 to 10,000 feet below the surface.
21:51 Josh Clark? Yeah.
21:51 Speaker 02 And they look crazy. They're a few feet long, and their jaw is really the star of the show. It's a lot bigger than their skull, and it can unhinge and act as a scoop. It looks sort of like, well, I mean, they call it pelican for a reason. It looks
22:07 Josh Clark? Yeah.
22:07 Speaker 02 pelican-esque, but it's shaped like a shovel, like if a shovel and a bucket got together and mated, this is what it would look like.
22:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, and it doesn't always look like that, right? So when it like changes shape, it looks extremely alien.
22:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:22 Josh Clark? It's really neat. The video I saw was,
22:26 Josh Clark? Gulper eel balloons its massive jaw on Nautilus Live. And it's just amazing to watch that thing do its thing.
22:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I agree. Very, very cool. This is, this next section to me is kind of the, one of the most astounding things that I didn't know about. It is the fact that eels have a real big significance in human history. And especially in medieval Europe, but we're talking mainly about the American eel, the European eel and the Japanese eel. These are freshwater eels. They go to spawn in the oceans, but they live in freshwater and they were a huge, huge source of food for a very long time in a lot of parts of the world.
23:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, and still are. Japan loves unagi.
23:13 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
23:15 Josh Clark? So, yeah, one of the reasons why they played such a role as a food source around the world is that, number one, they were easy to come by, like literally they're swimming around in streams and rivers all over the northern hemisphere. And in addition to that, they're really, really nutritious, it turns out, high in protein, lots of vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D, that's, that's hard to come by if you're not out in the sun.
23:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, B12, for God's sake.
23:46 Josh Clark? Yes, and only 375 calories for an eel filet, which is actually pretty calorie dense for a fish.
23:56 Josh Clark? But it's, it's very good for you too.
23:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot, a lot of good fat and protein in there as well. And that unagi that I used to love to eat, I would cook it up myself. It was, it was delicious.
24:07 Josh Clark? Oh, really? You cooked it yourself?
24:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think I talked about this before. There's, near the DeKalb Farmer's Market, near where I live, there's the, I think it's called the first Oriental Market, and they sell eel as well as lots of like kitchen wares and kind of cool stuff from, from Japan.
24:25 Josh Clark? Sure.
24:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can go get eel there out of the fridge and bake it in your oven and coat it with some, I use teriyaki, but I think traditionally is the kabiaki sauce is used.
24:35 Josh Clark? Is that right?
24:36 Speaker 02 To drill, to grill those things up. And it's, I mean, kabiaki is basically the same. I think it just doesn't have, like, I think it's like a stripped down teriyaki. It doesn't have ginger and garlic in it.
24:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think it's also a little thicker too, right?
24:48 Speaker 02 Uh, I don't know. I think it's about the same, but it's just, it's kind of just the, the sweet stuff.
24:53 Josh Clark? It is very good. I agree with you.
24:57 Josh Clark? Nothing in here really put me off of eel, especially Unagi.
25:00 Speaker 02 Hey, that's good for you.
25:02 Josh Clark? One of the things, you haven't screamed yet. We haven't reached that that part yet.
25:05 Speaker 02 No, no.
25:06 Josh Clark? Okay, so one of the reasons Unagi is, I guess, noteworthy in
25:13 Josh Clark? in Japanese culture, one, as far as sushi goes, it's one of the rare parts of sushi that's ever cooked, like, across the board.
25:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:21 Josh Clark? And then number two, it's called one of the big four foods of the Edo period, which I think ran from the 17th century to the 19th century. Those four were soba, sushi, and Dr. Pepper.
25:38 Speaker 02 I know this answer, so you didn't get me this time.
25:42 Josh Clark? What is the other one?
25:43 Speaker 02 The other one is tempura, and you mentioned it's the only one that's like routinely cooked because you have to, because eel blood is toxic to humans, so you have to grill that stuff up just right.
25:52 Josh Clark? Yeah.
25:53 Speaker 02 This is one of the things that astounded me is I didn't know that it was such a big deal in the northeastern US and eastern Canada before and after colonization. So indigenous peoples loved eel. I think eels made up about a quarter, more than a quarter, of the fish found in streams along the coast of the of northern northeastern northern America.
26:15 Josh Clark? Yeah.
26:15 Speaker 02 And, you know, you could smoke it and carry it with you on the trail. You could salt it and cure it, and obviously you could, you know, trap them and grill them up.
26:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think one of the things that I've read somewhere is that, like, an eel fillet is, it does not taste fishy. I saw it compared to a taste of venison even. My experience with eel has never been like that. It's always been like a little bit like on sushi. Did you ever eat like a big hunk of eel at once?
26:51 Speaker 02 No, it's always just been, you know, like you would eat on sushi, but they come in a long eel-like package.
26:59 Josh Clark? Sure.
27:00 Speaker 02 And, you know, you just bake it in the oven. I think they're already precooked.
27:04 Josh Clark? Oh, gotcha. Okay, okay.
27:05 Speaker 02 So you're, so they maybe shrunk or something, but you're basically just heating it up and glazing it.
27:10 Josh Clark? I got you. Smoke eel sounds kind of good. I would try smoked eel.
27:14 Speaker 02 That sounds really good.
27:16 Josh Clark? So it wasn't just the indigenous peoples of North America who were eating eel. The people in Europe at the same time were crazy for eel and had been for centuries and centuries. Apparently they found old willow traps, which are basically like woven baskets that are easy to get into and hard to get out of that eel would swim into and they'd be like, oh no, not again. And they would become smoked or salted or dried. And very interestingly Chuck, they would often be used as currency. That's how valued eel were, but also how common they were too.
27:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is the fact of this episode for me. I had no idea that in medieval times, not at medieval times, but during medieval times, about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year.
28:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, for all sorts of debts. And I mean, it continued on for a very long time. In Tequila Mockingbird, Walter Cunningham from Old Sarum pays Atticus Finch and a thousand live eels in one point.
28:22 Speaker 02 Is that for real?
28:25 Speaker 02 Oh man, I've never wanted to cuss so bad on the show.
28:28 Josh Clark? No, and the reason why that's a giveaway Chuck is that I said live eels. Nobody wanted the live eels.
28:35 Speaker 02 Oh, I didn't hear that part.
28:36 Josh Clark? Prepared, smoked, dried. And then depending on how many were put together, did you see like there were different names? For like 10 eels together or 25 eels together?
28:47 Speaker 02 Like wrap them up and what was a stick was one?
28:50 Josh Clark? Uh huh, that's like 25.
28:52 Speaker 02 Okay.
28:53 Josh Clark? And then, no, that's 10. Yeah, a bind is 25 and those are basically, they were treated like denominations. Like I'll give you a bind of eels for that can of Dr. Pepper.
29:05 Speaker 02 Two vines and a stick.
29:07 Josh Clark? Yeah.
29:08 Speaker 02 That'd be 25 or?
29:10 Josh Clark? It'd be 60.
29:12 Speaker 02 We should type it into Josh Clark calculates.
29:15 Josh Clark? It'd be like, does not compute.
29:18 Speaker 02 There needs to be one in there for Josh Clark calculates. It was like, how many eels would it take to live in the East Village for a month?
29:25 Josh Clark? That's a good one, man.
29:26 Speaker 02 And whatever year.
29:27 Josh Clark? 10 trillion eels.
29:30 Speaker 02 Uh, or how many sticks is that?
29:32 Josh Clark? Uh, that's a trillion sticks.
29:35 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
29:36 Josh Clark? Thank you. That was an easy one.
29:38 Speaker 02 Uh, they were very popular food-wise, though, during church holidays and during fasting seasons because, uh, and this is like up to like a few months out of the year, or more than that, 120 days.
29:49 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
29:49 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, that's like six months.
29:53 Josh Clark? A quarter of the year.
29:55 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
29:55 Josh Clark? A third.
29:56 Speaker 02 Oh, God, here we go.
29:57 Josh Clark? A third, a third.
29:58 Speaker 02 All right, I'm gonna type it into your website again. Uh, you could not eat meat, but you could eat fish during those fasting seasons. So because there were so many eels, uh, they were, you know, it was a pretty attractive meal.
30:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, a nice meal of eels.
30:15 Speaker 02 That's right.
30:17 Josh Clark? Uh, there was one other reason, too, that we'll see why they were highly thought of for fasting during Christian or Catholic, I guess, feast days, um, was that they are, have long been considered asexual, because as we'll see, they're like, people have no idea how they reproduced. Um, and I thought that was pretty interesting.
30:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, super interesting.
30:38 Josh Clark? Like, regular fish that have sex would just make you think of nothing but sex while you're eating them, I guess. But an eel, you're all good.
30:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, should we take a break, or should we talk about the reproduction now?
30:50 Josh Clark? I think we take a break, man.
30:51 Speaker 02 Okay, all right, we're gonna talk about how they reproduce right after this.
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32:21 Speaker 02 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
32:44 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
32:47 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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33:06 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
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33:56 Speaker 02 All right, everybody, back to the mystery of eel reproduction. In the old days, in the classical Mediterranean era, they had all kinds of crazy ideas about how eels reproduce because they seemed to just appear. No one ever saw them doing it. No one ever saw eel eggs. People had cut eels open and found no reproductive organs. They were, seems to be unusually preoccupied with this, in my opinion. They had a lot of weird opinions and theories as well, right?
34:28 Josh Clark? Sure, sure. But imagine if like, you know how much cow, say chicken.
34:33 Speaker 02 Okay.
34:35 Josh Clark? Humans eat a lot of chicken. Imagine if while you're eating chicken, you're like, where the hell do chickens come from? No one has any idea. I love this chicken, it's delicious, but I have no idea how chickens are born.
34:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you probably should have picked something that doesn't lay an egg in front of you, but yeah.
34:51 Josh Clark? Sure.
34:52 Speaker 02 I get what you mean.
34:53 Josh Clark? But I think that's another reason why the mystery is so deep is they're like, yeah, chickens lay eggs. Pigs, they'd love to do it. Like, they're all like, they knew how everything else came about, basically. Eels, they're like, I guess they just spontaneously generate.
35:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Finally, in 1777, there was an Italian surgeon and researcher named Carlo Mondini. And he finally, don't ask me how, but he finally located the ovaries of an eel. And they, for decades, no one could replicate that fact. And then eventually, they found the testicles as well. And no less than Sigmund Freud was one of the, one of the people looking for those eel testes.
35:37 Josh Clark? My friend, he was the one who found them.
35:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, he, this was earlier in his career, but
35:42 Josh Clark? Yeah.
35:42 Speaker 02 He dissected 400 eels, I guess he, on the 401st, found them.
35:47 Josh Clark? It's always the last eel you look in.
35:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:51 Josh Clark? So yeah, so Freud was the person who identified for the first time, people have been thinking about this for 2,000 years at least, how eels reproduce. But at the same time, they're like, great, they have gonads, they have ovaries. Where do they like, why don't we ever see them using these things? Why don't we ever see their babies? This is all very weird. So the mystery continued even after Freud, although it was really kind of starting to heat up around that time. I think Freud found the gonads in 1876. And within a couple of decades, I think within a decade, they had far more material to work with than they had. So like, it went from 2,000 years of not knowing what the heck was going on to bam bam bam, we almost have it figured out.
36:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Like, we knew that they metamorphosized. We knew that those glass eels, they're basically transparent little babies, they would show up in coastal waters every spring. And they knew that they turned into adolescent eels, they're called elvers. And they know that they would eventually turn color and swim up rivers. And they knew they would eventually become yellow eels and that they love to eat those things. And then eventually, they would become silver eels is the final stop on the eel train. And that is when they developed the equipment to reproduce and go upriver into the ocean. But the part between silver eels going from the river and then the glass eel floating around was the mystery.
37:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. But if you put those two things together, like, okay, the glass eels show up on the coast, the silver eels swim out to sea, seems like that these freshwater eels breeding grounds are somewhere out there in the ocean. It's gotta be, right?
37:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:37 Josh Clark? So before that, there was this idea that there were these little things, almost plankton-like organisms, or I think they were plankton, which apparently, the definition of plankton is any floating sea life that just gets moved along by the current, can't move around itself. There were these little tiny floating, I guess they were shaped like willow leaves. And they were identified as Leptocephalus brevirostus. And they thought this was a whole different type of fish. And it turned out what they were looking at were the larva of eels. They misidentified them as something and it took like a couple of decades before they were like, no, this is actually eel larvae.
38:21 Josh Clark? And they found out, thanks to a French guy named Yves Delage, who probably was quite surprised when he put one of these things in a tank.
38:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, he put one in a tank and saw it go through every metamorphosis, I guess. I would assume he kept getting bigger tanks unless he had a big one to begin with. But eventually it became a glass and then an elver. And then about 10 years after that, there was an Italian zoologist named Giovanni Battista, who saw this happen out in the wild. And so, all right, we really are cooking with gas now. But where do those little silver eels go? Where are they going to make this larva? They still hadn't figured out that part.
39:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, once they mature. So there's a Dutch marine biologist named Ernst Johan Schmidt, which is a great Danish name. I think I said Dutch, right? He's a Dane. Sorry, Danish people. He was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation. And yet, they were founded by the beer company.
39:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:22 Josh Clark? And they essentially funded scientific expeditions and they funded Ernst Schmidt. And he started, he just basically set out to figure out this mystery of how silver eels produce the little willow leaf larvae.
39:37 Speaker 02 That's right. So he started fishing, casting his nets along the coast. And he found, he found them in the North Sea. He found them in the Mediterranean and they were pretty big by this point. So he was like, I don't think this is where they started. Cause they've grown a little too much. So he got together with some commercial fishing boats, said, hey, I could use some help because you guys are all over the Atlantic. And they helped him out. And in 1912, he had a report finally to publish that said, these little small larvae and silver eels are, which is the end stage, all the way out in the mid Atlantic, in the middle of nowhere.
40:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. So he was like, I think that they probably breed in the Sargasso Sea. And he never found them. He never saw that they were in the Sargasso Sea, but it turned out he was correct.
40:32 Speaker 02 That's right. Sargasso Sea apparently is a pretty rich breeding ground for a lot of reasons. One reason because of the brown sargassum that floats on top. I think it just creates a sort of a nice covered shady habitat.
40:47 Josh Clark? Yeah.
40:47 Speaker 02 And it's not just the eels. I think a lot of things can reproduce in the Sargasso Sea.
40:51 Josh Clark? For sure. And the reason the Sargasso Sea is remarkable is it's a sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
40:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure.
40:57 Josh Clark? And it's kept in place by, I think, four currents that kind of come together and create a gyre. And in the middle of this gyre is what we call the Sargasso Sea. And it's relatively still compared to the rest of the ocean. It's very high in saline. And it stays pretty warm. It's largely off the coast of the eastern United States, I believe, is where it's mostly situated, all the way out to the Azores. Azores.
41:27 Speaker 02 Azores.
41:28 Josh Clark? Sure. And it turns out that in, I think, 2018, a European team led by Rosalind Wright found out that, yes, Ernst Schmidt was correct, that eels do actually mate in the Sargasso Sea.
41:46 Speaker 02 That's right. Now, that's those. There are other freshwater eels that spawn in other places, obviously. They don't all go there. I think Japanese eels spawn
41:58 Speaker 02 at these underwater mountains around the Mariana Ridge, which is pretty incredible.
42:02 Josh Clark? So neat.
42:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:04 Josh Clark? Yeah. And then I think African longfin eels spawn in the Indian Ocean. And you might say, like, who cares? Like, yeah, it was a mystery, but think about this. Eels. Or like halfway up the Rhine in Germany.
42:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:20 Josh Clark? And they're like, well, it's time for me to go reproduce. I'm getting to be that age. They swim all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean.
42:27 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
42:27 Josh Clark? Swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. That's where they mate. And then their little tiny larva, these little floating plankton, make their way all the way back to Europe again, where they turn into glass eels, then elvers, and then swim back up and take their place up the Rhine until they do the same thing. That's a very strange reproductive strategy, but that's what eels do.
42:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, eels are like salmon, please.
42:57 Josh Clark? Exactly. Yeah, there's a word for it. I can't quite bring to mind. I want to say catarsephalic. That might be it, but essentially it's they're born in the ocean and but they live their lives in fresh water.
43:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that word? I remember seeing it now.
43:12 Josh Clark? Catarsephalic. Catalytic? It's probably wrong, but I'm going to say that authoritatively.
43:18 Speaker 02 All right. So today, eels, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the red list, list them as threatened species. The European eels are critically endangered and the American, Japanese, and New Zealand longfin eels are endangered.
43:33 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
43:36 Josh Clark? Okay.
43:37 Speaker 02 I'm screaming now.
43:38 Josh Clark? I could see that, yeah.
43:39 Speaker 02 Cause they're endangered and then some of this other stuff to come was a pretty big turn off for me as far as eating them goes.
43:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, I guess that puts me off of eating eels too.
43:46 Speaker 02 Hey, no pressure, bud. American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s.
43:53 Josh Clark? Yeah.
43:54 Speaker 02 Same with Japanese eel populations. Hydropower turbines and dams is a big reason. We know that they disrupt all sorts of underwater aquatic life.
44:03 Josh Clark? Sure.
44:04 Speaker 02 But also overfishing, the loss of wetlands and pollution. So they, you know, the eels that you eat, and this almost got me back on it. They're raised in aquaculture facilities.
44:18 Josh Clark? Okay.
44:18 Speaker 02 They aren't bred in captivity because it's really hard to do as obviously that we've seen their reproduction is pretty tricky overall.
44:25 Josh Clark? Right.
44:25 Speaker 02 So if they were to try and do that, they would have to introduce hormones to induce sexual development. Keeping those larvae alive is really difficult in captivity, just because of the organic matter that exists in the wild, like they really need that stuff. So what they do is they capture those little glass eels in the wild and bring them to the farms to raise them to maturity so you can eat them.
44:50 Josh Clark? Right. And one of the reasons, maybe the reason that American and European eels have dropped by 90% since the 70s is that when you're taking these glass eels out of the ocean, number one, you're preventing that same number of eels from ever growing up to reproduce because they're going to get eaten before they get a chance to. And two, if eels follow any kind of typical evolutionary strategy, they probably have a ton of larvae and a huge percentage of them die off and the glass eels are the ones that make it. So what you're doing is saying like, thanks for the surviving larvae, everybody. We're going to take them and eat them. So that prevents an entire species from reproducing
45:32 Josh Clark? for the most part. And that's why their stocks have died off from those fisheries.
45:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I think we skipped the part where like, didn't they tag eels to, to track them?
45:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's how they found out Rosalind, right? In 2018. That's how they found out. But yeah, I forgot to mention that part.
45:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. Crazy to tag a little eel. Maine, the US state of Maine is the only state that has a glass eel fishing industry. They have licensed what they're called alvermen because remember the alvers is the third to, I guess, the penultimate stage. And there are 425 licensed alvermen that can harvest around 7,500 pounds between late March and early June every year, and then they ship it off to Hong Kong.
46:13 Josh Clark? Very nice. Do you know what the third to last is called?
46:17 Speaker 02 Oh, is there a word for that? Are you about to dupe me?
46:19 Josh Clark? No, this is for real, Chuck. I promise.
46:21 Speaker 02 Okay, what?
46:22 Josh Clark? It's anti-penultimate, but like A-N-T-E, like anti-chamber, anti-penultimate.
46:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I like that. That always reminds me, and I think I mentioned this in the Gary Larson episode, the second to the last of the Mohicans cartoon.
46:38 Josh Clark? Yeah.
46:39 Speaker 02 Which is just a big line of indigenous, I guess, Mohicans. And the second to the last of the one in line, everyone's facing one way and he just turned around and waving and smiling.
46:51 Josh Clark? How great, man. That guy. You got anything else about eels?
46:56 Speaker 02 No. That's it.
46:57 Josh Clark? Okay.
46:59 Josh Clark? Yeah. If you want to know more about eels, go watch videos about David Byrne and see what books he recommends. You can also visit your local aquarium. You can also go online and visit the website of your local aquarium. There's all sorts of stuff you can do to learn more about eels, and I urge you to. And maybe stop eating them. I'm going to too, okay Chuck?
47:21 Speaker 02 Really?
47:22 Josh Clark? I'm gonna stop eating American or European eels for sure.
47:25 Speaker 02 All right, no more Unagi for us.
47:28 Josh Clark? No, it's been a while since I had it anyway, so it's not like it's a huge give up for me.
47:32 Speaker 02 All right, good.
47:34 Josh Clark? Well, since Chuck agreed that we're both going to give up eel, it's time for listener mail.
47:42 Speaker 02 This is from Alex, and this is a follow up about the baking soda and coconut oil deodorant from the listener mail. Apparently Alex is sort of an expert on this, so.
47:51 Josh Clark? Okay.
47:52 Speaker 02 Again, you don't tread carefully whenever you're applying anything to your skin and body.
47:57 Josh Clark? Can you refresh my memory? I don't remember that deodorant.
48:00 Speaker 02 Basically, like baking soda and coconut oil, if you mix together into a paste, can be a good like natural deodorant.
48:05 Josh Clark? Okay.
48:05 Speaker 02 But it can also like chafe your skin and cause outbreaks if you don't get the mix right.
48:11 Josh Clark? Okay.
48:12 Speaker 02 So this is what Alex says. "I've been doing this for the better part of 15 years, guys, and have continuously adjusted the recipe to balance what I found to be three main factors: odor-eliminating effectiveness, skin reaction, and staining of clothing. Baking soda is responsible for the first two and needs to be carefully balanced to be effective enough while not causing a rash. Coconut oil is commonly used to act as a concentration reduction and application medium, but it stains the clothes. I found that cornstarch is excellent in being a neutral alternative to reduce the concentration of the baking soda. I usually go about equal volumes of the two, then add only enough coconut oil to make a thick paste." In a pinch, if I find myself having forgotten to use deodorant, I will moisten my finger
48:54 Speaker 02 and dab it directly in baking soda so that it is only very lightly dusted and then rub that on my armpits. But don't do that too often, guys. You'll end up with unhappy pits. But it's a great backup because most people have a box of baking powder open in the fridge and don't care about fingers in it because it's not there for eating. A girlfriend from another lifetime once told me I should start an armpit empire. And by the way, guys, I'm in Puerto Rico. So if you ever feel like coming to do a show in the tropics, I'd be the first one out telling everyone to buy tickets. And that is Alex.
49:26 Josh Clark? Thanks a lot, Alex. Can you just see Alex dipping his fingers in some baking soda and rubbing them on his armpit and saying, ah, refreshed?
49:34 Speaker 02 I can just see it.
49:36 Josh Clark? If you want to be like Alex and give us even more detail about a whatever it is you know a lot about, we would love that. You can send it to us at [email protected] .
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50:38 Speaker 03 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
51:01 Speaker 07 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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