Animal behavior
High-voltage fish in the Amazon swarm the buffet.
Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, researchers have found that electric eels can work together to rust a meal – not like wolves or hurricanes.
Years of scientific observations have classified electric eels as solitary ones that have stunned some fish. But Douglas Bastos at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil, Carlos David de Santana at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC and their colleagues set the record: they filmed more than 100 Volta’s electric eels (Electrophorus voltai) hunting as a group.
The researchers saw that an eel started swimming in circles in a lake around dusk and dawn to herd small fish in shallow water. This is followed by a synchronized attack. About ten eels rounded off the prey simultaneously with powerful electrical drainage, causing the fish to jump out of the water and fall to the surface, where they were quickly devoured by their predators.
According to Santana, this behavior is probably rare and can only occur if the prey buffet is plentiful enough to feed many eels.