(dramatic music begins)
- [Mark] You've seen the eels, you've witnessed the shocks,
but now it's time to learn what really happened
when I was electrocuted by a giant electric eel.
Lurking in the murky waters of the Amazon basin
lives the world's most mysterious predator.
Stalking, waiting, seemingly invisible
and without warning, can ambush it's unsuspecting prey
with a vicious jolt of electricity.
The electric eel is one of the most infamous creatures
on the planet.
And earlier this year, I put myself in the middle of
the craziest experiment I've ever attempted.
The following is the true story of what really happened.
But before we get to that,
let's relive both shocks one more time.
Right now, I'm about to stick my hand in this tank
to experience the shock of an electric eel.
And if you can't tell, I am definitely nervous.
This is easily the craziest thing I've ever done
on the Brave Wilderness channel.
Oh my gosh, you cannot believe how I'm nervous right now.
All right, here we go.
Gonna go for a shock, here we go.
One,
two.
Three.
(suspenseful music)
(loud scream) Whoa.
(exclaiming loudly)
Wow.
Holy smokes.
You definitely do not expect that from a fish.
You never in your life expect a fish to shock you like that.
All right, here comes the big shock.
I'm Mark Vins
and this is getting shocked by a really big electric deal.
Here goes nothing.
One,
two.
Oh, I feel it in the water.
Three.
(loud scream) (electric shots)
(woman laughing) Yeah.
(exclaiming loudly)
Oh my gosh.
- [Camera Man] You okay, Mark?
- Hold on, give me a second.
- [Distorted Voice] That really stung bad.
(suspenseful music)
- Hi everybody, I'm Mark Vins
and on today's very special video,
I'm going to be talking about the craziest thing
that I've ever done for the Brave Wilderness channel.
A few months ago, I got shocked not once, but twice,
by the world's most powerful, electric creature,
which of course, is none other than the electric eel.
Yes, it was absolutely crazy.
But the one thing that I noticed after we released the video
was the outpouring of questions from the audience.
So, to start off today's video,
I'm going to answer some of those questions.
And then we're going to take a deeper dive
into some of the science behind this mysterious creature.
So to kick things off, why did I do it in the first place?
Totally valid, totally reasonable question to ask.
Well, truth be told,
I've been wanting to make this video for many, many years,
yet as we started Brave Wilderness,
we just couldn't connect that dot
to actually making it happen.
However, the situation recently did present itself
where I could take a shock from this animal,
but also in a way that was visually significant,
because one of the things
that was obvious from the first shock
was you really can't see I'm getting shocked.
You just see my uh! (grunting loudly)
And did I take a shock?
Did I not? Am I acting?
Is it real? Is it fake?
All those things come into play.
So, we knew if there had to be a way for you to see it.
In comes Diana, the physics girl
and her friends Archattack.
(electric shots) (woman laughing)
- What?
- [Diana] That is all the eel.
- The fact that an animal can actually produce
an electric charge up to 860 volts,
just completely blew my mind.
So, I had to know firsthand if it was actually true
And if I could show it to you, the audience.
That's why I got shocked by an electric eel.
Second question I saw a lot,
was I nervous?
Well, I said so many times in the video,
so I thought that was pretty obvious.
I am definitely nervous.
Oh my gosh, you cannot believe how nervous I am right now.
I'm usually so excited to see you, why am I nervous?
(both laughing)
I'm so nervous.
I was so nervous earlier,
this is making it way, way worse.
Yes, I was absolutely nervous.
I was actually like, losing sleep,
leading up to the filming of this video,
because I didn't know what was gonna happen.
There's not a lot of videos out there
about getting shocked by an electric eel.
When I was first putting my hand in the water,
there was a lot of anticipation of like,
am I going to take a shock like,
as soon as I breach the surface?
But I can tell you, I was not able to take a shock
just by merely having my hand in the water,
I actually had to make contact.
But I will tell you this,
as soon as I touched the eel, wha-bam, like right away.
Like, it was not like, a delayed reaction.
It was like, instant electrical jolt,
which leads me to my next question.
Did it hurt?
Yeah, it hurt a lot.
The first one stung me,
the second shock, the shock heard round the world,
was unbelievably powerful.
I would estimate that this was the full charge,
like, the full capacity for an electric eel
to shock something that blew the fuse on the Tesla coil.
That's actually what happened, the fuse blew.
You could see a big green flash and hear a crazy noise,
that was the fuse in the Tesla coil actually exploding.
After that sound, I got super nervous,
cause I got dizzy like, I locked up.
I remember thinking to myself, "Oh crap, oh crap,
don't fall, don't fall into the tank,
don't fall off of the platform,
get yourself to a place where you can splay out."
So, I backed up quickly
and I just remember falling on my butt.
For the rest of the evening
I actually had some lingering after-effects.
I had tingles up and down my arm,
my neck was super hot, my ear turned really red
and just like, this whole side of my face felt hot
for the rest of the night.
Now, that's one thing Diana told me
and our friends at Archattack backed up,
whenever you're shocked or electrocuted,
the energy flowing through you has to ground somewhere else.
That could be into the air, that can be into the water,
but the energy goes through you and flows somewhere.
In this case, it flowed right out my ear.
Cause you could see how red my ear turned
and the other ear was not red at all.
The next question,
can the eel shock over and over?
Yes, they absolutely can.
In fact, if you go back and you watch the second shock,
let's see that one more time.
(electric shots) (screaming loudly)
Yeah.
Oh, never get over that.
You'll notice that the charge doesn't dissipate,
it actually goes up
and that's how they're incapacitating their prey.
It's not necessarily just one shock, it's lots of shocks.
(electric shots)
That is how an electric eel operates
and I unfortunately had to experience that firsthand.
How dangerous was getting shocked by an electric eel?
Well, I can say this,
it's not completely safe
and I definitely don't recommend anybody take a shock
if the opportunity presents itself.
Now that being said,
I felt I was able to go through with this,
because I consulted with enough safety professionals
and people with enough firsthand accounts,
to feel that I had a pretty good chance
of surviving this experience.
But that being said,
there was certainly no guarantee
that I was going to be safe.
And with that, let's talk about some science,
because the other reason I wanted to make this video
was to talk more about the facts of this animal.
The eel shock video was crazy,
but we didn't really get to dive super deep
into the details about this mysterious creature.
So with that, here are my favorite facts
about the electric eel.
Fact number one, their name.
The electric eel has somewhat been mislabeled
by its early discoverers.
While they certainly look like an eel
and are commonly called just that,
an electric eel isn't really an eel at all.
It is a member of the knifefish family
and are more closely related to carp or catfish.
It gets its name from its eel-shaped body,
which can grow up to nine feet long
and weigh nearly 50 pounds at full size.
Fact number two, the air breather.
These creatures are native to south American rivers,
but they do not spend all their time under the surface.
Since they can only extract
about 20% of the oxygen they need
from the muddy water in which they live,
they will surface every 10 to 15 minutes to breathe air.
That's right, these fish have lungs.
Fact number three, yes, they can shock.
Using its highly specialized nervous system,
the electric eel can activate
disc-shaped, electricity producing cells
packed into three specialized organs.
The main organ, hunters organ and sachs organ,
all contain electrogenic cells
and through a command nucleus,
can decide when the electric shock will fire.
An array of nerves ensures that
all these thousands of electric shocking cells,
can activate at once.
Pow!
(woman laughing) (exclaiming loudly)
Fact number four, it's all lopsided.
While 80% of the eel is its tail
and dedicated to making the electric shock,
everything else has to be held in the front 20%,
including its head and vital organs.
In fact, if you look just below the chin,
you can see it's vent.
And for a fish, the vent is it's butt.
Yeah.
Fact number five, electric eels are mostly blind.
Those two little beads on the eels head are its eyes.
However, they don't function very well,
since the electric eel's mostly blind.
Instead of relying on site,
they will use a radar-like system of electrical pulses
to navigate their way through murky water
in hunt for their food.
Fact number six, hunting with the lightning.
Along with fending off predators,
the electric eel will also use their electricity
to hunt prey.
The ability to stun pray like, small crustaceans or fish,
makes for an easy meal, which is important,
because believe it or not,
these eels have no teeth and must swallow their food whole.
Fact number seven, how much electricity can they generate?
Given the fact that 80% of the eels body
is dedicated to producing electricity,
it may come as no surprise that the electric eel
can pack the biggest wallop
of all electric species in the world,
generating up to 860 volts.
However, that's not the end of the story.
Voltage, as we learned,
is not the end all, be all of the shock.
Where in this case I'm just stunned,
because the amperage is actually very low.
So, when it comes to electric shocks,
it's all about the amperage.
So, there you have it.
My favorite facts about the electric eel.
I hope you learned something new through that
and I hope you enjoyed this discussion
of the craziest thing that I've ever done
for Brave Wilderness.
Getting shocked, not once, but twice by an electric eel.
I'm Mark Vins, be brave, stay wild.
We'll see you next time.
(distant howl)