ALEXANDER von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a notable German geographer, explorer, and naturalist. He is widely recognized for his works on botanical geography which laid the foundation for biogeography. To this day, he is known as one of the most significant contributors to the earth sciences.
In March 1800, while he was exploring the Orinoco River (major river of South America), he was fascinated by electric eels. He described his experience.
It was very difficult to catch because they burrow into the muck of shallow waters. He recruited natives to capture live specimens. The natives suggested “horse fishing” – corralling several wild horses and forcing them into the shallow water. The alarmed animals stamped and snorted, riling up the eels and compelling them to attack by leaping out of the water and pressing their long bodies to the horses’ bellies, releasing a series of electric shocks. The voltage was strong two horses drowned in the process. With the eels quickly exhausted, the fisherman waded in and safely grabbed five of the exhausted eels. Humboldt dissected the electric eels from which he received a number of electric shocks himself.
No scientific studies on the matter, and no similar observations were made, many scientists thought this was just an exaggerated story by Humboldt. One naturalist called it “tommyrot”. Why would the eels attack the horses instead of swimming away? Do electric eels leap out of the water and deliver enough voltage to kill a horse?
In 2016, after more than two hundred years, Kenneth Catania at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) published a paper reporting on a series of lab experiments with electric eels. His findings lent credence to Humboldt’s account of eels aggressively leaping up and stunning the horses with a series of high-voltage discharges.
