Evan Ehrenhalt, age 7, of Richmond, Virginia, for his question:
What happens when two electric eels touch each other?
These whopping creatures live in streams that flow through thick steamy jungles. They give off jolts of electricity and the water around them is charged with electric power. It can be fatal to touch one, and a man may be stunned just by swimming in the charged water around them.
Every good question is busy hunting for its proper answer. It pops into your head hoping to find someone to help. You get interested and all fired up, so you start tracking down the answer that matches the fascinating question: Sometimes you find it plainly printed in a book at home, at school or in your library. Maybe you have to ask your teacher, your parents or other friends and relatives. But often they cannot help. After all, grown ups have not had time to find all the answers either. Your question just could be a really tricky one. So get ready for an eye popping surprise. There are thousands of good questions that even the best brains in the world cannot answer not yet, anyway.
But people are solving them one by one. About 300 years ago, a question popped into the mind of a bright young man. He wondered why apples always fall down instead of up or sideways. He kept searching for the right answer. But he could not explain why apples fall down until he had figured out the immense laws of gravitation. And spacemen had to understand those laws before they could launch a satellite. There are many stories like this one. The answer to every interesting question was tracked down by some wide awake hunter. But there are a zillion questions still waiting to find the right answers.
Today's question looked rather easy to answer. Andy began the search by looking through all his books. They did not help. He tried more books from libraries. Still no help. Next he talked with an expert at Marineland a place where they keep all sorts of fishes and other creatures in suitable tanks of water. This expert knew a lot about electric eels. But he could not answer today's question. What's more, he thinks that no other expert knows what would happen if two electric eels touched each other. They might give off powerful electric shocks and kill each other. In any case, it would be risky to chance it. So only one electric eel is kept in a tank. They never take the chance of putting two together for fear that your question just might have a sad answer.
Andy's friendly expert explained that electric eels are hard to study. They are huge fellows with long, fat tails stuffed with powerful, built in batteries. They send out electrical shocks into the water around them. These jolts are powerful enough to stun a horse or a man in the water. So experts handle them with care. They know how the built in batteries work. And also that the shocks damage the electric eel's own eyes. When young, his bright beady eyes can see. Later his own jolts of electricity make him quite blind. But at present we do not know what his electric batteries can do to other electric eels.
The powerful electric eel is really a snaky looking fish, often six feet long. He enjoys life in the lazy streams around the Amazon River of South America. Here it is hard to study his habits and his life story. We know that he shares his streams with other electric eels. But we do not know whether they ever fight each other. However, they do give off electric shocks to stun and destroy their enemies. No other creature in those streams can get close enough to harm the powerful electric eels.
Today's question looked rather easy to answer. Andy began the search by look¬ing through all his books. They did not help. He tried more books from the librar¬ies. Still no help. Then he talked with an expert at a big aquarium in Southern California. Well, said the expert, to tell the truth, we don't know. We don't want to try putting two electric eels together for fear that they might electrocute each other. That would be too expensive an experiment.
That was an answer that really wasn't an answer. So Andy went further and checked with the scientist who takes care of the eels at an aquarium in Northern California. He knew from his own observations that if you had a fairly large tank and if the eels in it had been there for some time, there wouldn't be any trouble. They wouldn't shock each other. But in a smaller tank, some eels did get sick and died. He thought that possibly they had given each other shocks, but he was not sure.
Finally Andy talked with the curator of the aquarium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a great deal of research on electric eels has taken place. At this aquarium, they have designed an electrical system so that when the eels discharge electricity, the charge is registered on lights and meters outside the tank. The curator told Andy that many, many times he had seen the eels discharging electricity at feeding time when they were so close to each other that they were actually touching but he had never seen one of these eels hurt. From his research, he is sure that somehow electric eels are absolutely immune to each other's electricity.
Because the waters of their native rivers are so muddy, it is almost impossible to study electric eels there. We do know that they grow to be huge fellows with powerful built in batteries and they can send out electrical shocks into the water around them. These jolts are so powerful that they can stun a horse or a man in the water. So experts are extremely careful when they handle them.
This underwater powerhouse is really a snaky looking fish, often six feet long. He doesn't see very well, but there's no reason why he should. The waters in the giant Amazon, where electric eels are at home, are so muddy that even the best eyes wouldn't help. So instead of eyes, the Pittsburgh expert told Andy, they use a sort of radar to catch their prey.