(tense music)
- What I have here in front of me
is a three and a half foot electric eel
capable of producing an electric shock
up to 860 volts,
enough to take down a horse,
let alone me.
To put that in perspective,
that's about eight times the voltage
that's in your household outlet.
And I never stuck my finger in the outlet as a kid,
I listened to my mom,
but right now I'm about to stick my hand in this tank
to experience the shock of an electric eel.
If you can't tell, I am definitely nervous.
This is easily the craziest thing I've ever done
on the "Brave Wilderness" channel.
(exhales deeply) Oh my gosh, you cannot believe
how nervous I am right now.
(groans) All right, here we go.
It's gonna go for shock, here we go.
One,
two,
three.
(tense music)
(Mark groans)
Now, before you witness the results
of my first electrocution,
it's important to note that this electric eel
is an educational ambassador for its species
and was not harmed by shocking.
Please do not attempt to recreate what you're about to see.
This experiment was filmed under the supervision
of professionals.
(tense music)
(groans)
Oh.
Whew, whew, whew.
Wow.
Holy smokes.
(exhales deeply)
Ooh, yeah,
that you don't expect.
You definitely do not expect that from a fish.
Wow.
Holy mackerel.
You see an animal like this and yeah, it looks strange,
but you never in your life expect a fish
to be able to shock you like that.
Whoa.
As soon as I made contact with the eel, it was like instant.
Oh my gosh.
(groans)
(exhales deeply) The good news is my first shock
with the electric keel is over.
The bad news is that's not my last shock of the day.
This is just the beginning.
Underneath that tarp, we have an absolutely monstrous
electric eel, one that will dwarf the size of this one.
And in case you're wondering, yes,
size does matter when it comes to shocks and electric eels.
But before we get to the ultimate shock,
we need to understand a little bit more about
what's going on inside the body of this animal
that allows it to produce this tremendous
amount of energy.
In order to do that, I've invited my good friend,
Diana, "Physics Girl" here today
to put me through a few more shock experiments
so we can learn a little bit more
about what's going on in the electric eel.
All right, let's go meet up with Diana.
(both groan)
Oh my Gosh.
Oh boy, Diana.
I'm usually so excited to see you, why am I nervous?
(both laugh)
- I mean, usually I haven't brought one of these
to our reunions.
- Oh, my Gosh,
what is this, speaking of?
- Well, you wanted me to teach you about how shocking works
and so that's what we're gonna do with this thing here.
So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna just gonna
turn this on, you're going to then touch it quickly.
But as I turn it on, as it gets warmed up,
you're gonna feel like a little tingling.
- All right, hold up. - Yeah.
- I have to touch this?
- You're gonna have to touch it, yeah.
Okay, ready?
- Okay, go for it.
(taps machine)
(machine whirling)
Wait, wait, why do you look nervous?
- (chuckles) 'Cause I hate this thing.
- (laughs nervously) Okay.
- [Diana] I've experienced it.
- All right. - Yeah.
Fingers straight out to that big metal sphere.
Mm-hmm.
(sparks rattling)
(groans in pain)
- Try your arm.
- Try my arm? - Yeah.
(sparks rattling)
- [Diana] Ooh, that's a big one.
- Whoa,
you see my hair standing up?
(Diana Chuckles)
I think I can smell my hair burning actually.
Whoa.
- How does that feel?
- (groans) That's about as much as I can take.
(Diana laughs)
Now you got my attention.
(Diana chuckles)
How does this relate to electric eels?
- So what we're doing with this thing,
this is called a Van Der Graaf generator.
And it's the perfect thing for understanding charge,
because what happens here is a bunch of charges build up
on this sphere.
And then as soon as you bring your hand near it,
they discharge, they actually traveled through the air
to your finger.
- So that's like the little lightning bolt
that I'm seeing.
- Yeah. - Got it.
So, okay, I think I understand now,
so basically this Van der Graaf globe represents
an electric site in the eels.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
In the eel, they build up charge
and then it discharges all at once
just like the spark from the Van Der Graaf generator.
- Got it, so it's like a chain reaction.
So very much like a battery.
And here's a cool fact.
The first battery is actually invented by
a gentleman named Volta and he actually designed
his first battery off of the inner workings
of the electric eel.
So without this animal, there would be no Duracell
and there certainly would not be a Tesla,
which is pretty cool.
Okay, so the eel, we couldn't measure the first shock,
but we know they can be up to like 860 volts.
- Mm-hmm. - How many volts is this?
- This is about 350,000.
- Ah, what?
- 350, 000 volts.
- How am I standing here?
(Diana chuckles)
Are you trying to kill me?
- That's the difference between voltage and current.
So you need to know about both.
So I've got one more experiment to learn about current.
- Okay, so there's more shocks to come.
- There's a lot more.
Next experiment I've got,
so this is a Tens unit.
A lot of people are probably more familiar with this.
So this is gonna give you some little pulses
of electricity through your arm.
- All right.
- It is going through your skin and some of the tissues
just below your skin.
And now I'm gonna turn it on
and then I'm gonna go ahead and just bump it up
little by little. - Okay.
(machine beeps)
- You feel anything?
- Nothing.
Oh, oh, yeah, somethings happening.
- Yeah, you felt that?
- Yeah, a little something.
- [Diana] What's it feel like?
- It feels tingly.
Yeah, I think I can take-
- How low? - Oh, oh.
(Diana laughs)
I didn't do that.
- Can we go up a little higher?
We're at number two, by the way-
- How high does it go out?
- Out of eight.
How are you feeling?
- I think I can go to a four, let's try four.
- Okay, we're gonna go up to three.
(electricity buzzes)
(both laugh)
- I'm not doing that, I swear.
- I feel a little bad, but not that bad.
We probably only got up to about 25 volts there.
- Really?
- So it's really, really low in comparison.
- Oh, I would have guessed it was like a million volts.
- Nope, nope.
But the thing is that there's more energy flowing,
more charge is flowing through here.
Should we go higher than a four?
How do you feel about that?
- Let it rip. - Okay.
Ready? - Yep.
- Okay, here we go up to as high as I can.
(electricity buzzes)
- (groans loudly) Okay.
(taps on table)
I tap out, tap out, okay.
- That was a six. - That was good.
- That was a six? - That was a six.
But yeah, the biggest difference is that
there's more current flowing
and that's, what's gonna get you
because you've got more energy.
Plus it's not as fast.
Like the eel, the Van der Graaf generator,
like bam, you're done.
This is continual. - Okay.
- So yeah. - Okay.
- Current's what's going to do you in.
- I still need this hand for another eel shock.
So we needed to find a way for everyone at home
to see the shock from the eel.
Because like, obviously right here,
you could see that I was feeling the current.
You could see the lightning bolt from the Van der Graaf,
but you can't really see anything happening
with the eel shock.
How can we maybe visualize it?
- Yeah, so we've got one more thing set up
to be able to see there's actually electricity
running through the water.
- As it turns out, the electric eel
isn't actually an eel at all.
It is a species of night fish that are more closely related
to carpet and catfish.
But they are definitely electric.
Their tail contains three electric organs
that are each packed with thousands of cells
called electrocytes.
These cells act like a series of batteries
one stacked on top of another.
And by moving electrons across their surface,
they can produce shocks on demand.
And I mean big shocks and lots of them.
So for this next experiment,
we're going to harness all of that energy
and turn it into visual fireworks that you can see.
- Whoa, what is this?
- Come on in here.
Okay, so this is a Tesla coil.
- Okay. - Yeah.
So you remember the spark from the Van der Graaf generator?
- I sure do.
- Much bigger on this one.
And we are not gonna touch this one because the sparks
are gonna be like six inches.
This one's dangerous.
- Really? - Yeah, yeah.
I didn't bring this one.
This was made actually, rigged up by my friends
from ArcAttack,
and this whole system was made by them.
There's some probes in the water in the tank.
We will send the electric shock from the eel
through the water,
and then it's directly connected to the Tesla coil.
So we'll be able to see through the spark
every single time the eel is shocking the water
or you. - (laughs) Or me.
- Or we'll see it or hear it.
It's going to be really cool.
- Well, this is perfect.
Thank you for building this.
Thank you to ArcAttack for putting this together.
I think all that's left to do now is to reveal the eel
and fire this up.
It's time for the grand finale, folks.
You ready? - I'm ready.
- Here we go.
(tense suspenseful music)
- (chuckles) Oh, so nervous.
Are you ready Diana? - I'm ready.
On three,
one,
two,
three.
Oh, it's the whole tank.
- [Diana] (chuckles) Oh my Gosh.
- That eel is over one meter in length,
over a foot and a half longer than the eel this morning.
And like I told you,
size does matter when it comes to electric eels
and their shock.
Basically, the bigger the battery,
the bigger the charge.
Should we turn on the Tesla coil?
- Yeah, yeah, let's hear it.
(sparks popping)
(Diana laughs)
- What?
- [Diana] That is all the eel.
- That makes it so much worse.
- Every single shot, that's all the eel.
Oh my God.
- I was so nervous earlier,
this is making it way, way worse, okay.
- [Diana] This is so cool, but I did not envy you.
- There you go.
You may be wondering why this electric eel
is producing electricity unprovoked.
Well, there's a reason they have three electric organs.
The Sach's organ pulses with a lower voltage shock,
which is used like radar for electro communication
and navigation throughout its environment.
This is important since they live in the murky waters
of South America and have extremely poor eyesight.
Then there's the main and Hunter's organs.
These are the ones that produce those infamous
high voltage shocks
which are used to stun their prey
so they can be swallowed alive.
(sparks popping)
All right, here we go.
(spark pops)
(Mark scoffs)
Okay.
(exhales heavily)
All right.
On three, here we go.
I'm Mark Vins,
and this is getting shocked by a really big electric eel.
One,
two,
three.
(tense music)
(tense music intensifies)
Nope.
Got nervous, sorry.
(sparks popping)
- This really sets the scene for you, Mark.
- Sure does.
(Diana laughs)
Thanks Diana.
I love science.
All right.
(sparks popping)
That's the eel doing all this?
- That's all the eel.
- Okay, let's see if I can feel it.
(spark popping)
Oh. - You felt that?
- Yeah. - That's cool.
- I can tell you this,
the eel this morning was not doing this.
- Yeah, yeah.
- This eel is feisty.
This shock is gonna be bad.
All right, here we go.
(Diana chuckles)
The shock's gonna be (mumbles)
All right.
Here comes the big shock.
I'm Mark Vins,
And this is getting shocked by a really big electric eel.
Here goes nothing.
One,
two,
oh, I could feel in the water, three.
(sparks popping fast)
(Mark groans)
(Diana laughs)
(groans in pain) Oh, oh, oh.
Oh, my...
- [Crew Member] You okay, Mark?
- Yeah.
Hold on, give me a second.
That really felt bad.
(crew member speaking indistinctly)
- Ooh.
(exhales deeply)
Yeah.
That was so much worse.
That was a lot worse than this morning.
Holy smokes.
Did you see the shock?
I heard it.
- [Diana] Yeah.
- Oh man, like I...
Sorry, I'm trying to compose myself.
Let me try to describe to you guys what I just went through.
Obviously I got shocked really bad.
Like holy cow, you could hear the Tesla coil.
I think it might've exploded, I don't know.
Before I could feel it,
my legs were locked,
my abdomen
locked up.
- [Diana] Are you okay?
- Yeah, I'm fine.
I just, sorry, I'm trying to tell everybody
what it was like.
- Yeah. - Holy cow.
Did we break the Tesla coil?
- I'm not sure. (laughs)
- I think it exploded.
- The sound is like a horror movie.
Like it was like a (mimics buzzing)
- I could still feel it- - Yeah.
- like up and down. - Does it burn?
Like, what is it?
- It's just like,
I think it's just my nerves are just like freaking out.
- Fully fired on that side of your body?
- Yeah.
It's definitely up here. - Only on the one side?
- Yeah, like this arm's fine.
This arm- - Crazy.
- And then up through here.
- Oh my God.
- [Crew Member] Dude, you ear's red.
- Is it? - Yeah.
- [Diana] It's bright red.
- [Crew Member] Totally, look at that.
- Yeah. - It's bright red.
- Is it?
- Yeah. - It feels hot.
That was the craziest thing I've ever done.
- Yeah.
- Lived to tell about it.
- [Diana] (laughing) Oh my God.
- Shocked by the electric eel.
Diana, thank you so much.
- Oh my God.
- If you haven't checked out "Physics Girl" on YouTube,
Diana does some pretty darn cool experiments.
I highly recommend you subscribe to her channel.
Big thanks to ArcAttack,
I hope I didn't break your Tesla coil.
And thank you for watching this video.
This is absolutely the craziest thing I've ever done,
but hopefully you learned a lot today about electric eels
and how crazy of an animal they truly are.
I'm Mark Vins,
Be brave,
stay wild.
We'll see you on the next experiment?
- [Diana] Oh, God.
- (laughs) Let's go.
(laughter)
(wolf howling)
(birds chirping)