Elaine S. Garrett, age 9, of Roxbury, Mass., for her question:
Is the eel a fish or a reptile?
When we think of fish, we usually think of some animal like the mackerel. But the wriggly eel looks for all the world like a snake. And the snake is a reptile. Many snakes live in the water, so perhaps the eel is a water snake. No, this is not so. The experts who classify the countless animals tell us that the eel is not a reptile.
An ordinary fish like the mackerel is a streamlined creature. His body is wider in the middle and one end tapers to his pointed nose. The other end tapers to his fishy tail which spreads out like a gauzy fan. He has several pairs of gauzy fins, his body is coated with glossy scales and he has a pair of gills for taking oxygen from the water.
The wriggly eel does not look at all like an ordinary fish. He looks like a snake, but he is not a snake or any other kind of reptile. He is a fish, even though he does not look at all like a fish. The green moray eel may be six feet long and his snaky body has no scales. He is bright green and he lives in the warm coral waters of the West Indies. The big conger eel wears a flowing fin down the center of his back. He is an ocean traveler and he may be four feet long,
One of tie most interesting eels is the American eel. Like all his wriggly relatives, he has gills for taking oxygen from the water. He is more like a fish than some of his bigger cousins, for he has scales. True, you do not :notice his scales when you catch and try to hold the slippery fellow. This is because they are vary small and embedded in his slithery skin.
The eels we find in our streams and rivers are females, anywhere from one to seven years old. They travel many miles upstream from the ocean and often cross over land from one watery hone to the next.
They can do this, even though they have no lungs for taking oxygen from the air. then a land journey is necessary, the eel chooses to travel by night. Then the air is moist and the grassy ground is likely to be drenched with dew. While out of the water, this strange fish takes in oxygen through her slippery skin, We often find her miles inland, but she was born in the mid Atlantic and her life story is one of the most remarkable events in the whole kingdom of animals.
The parent eels return to their nesting grounds off Bermuda, lay their eggs and die there. The baby eels set out for our shores, growing bigger as they go. Near some river mouth, the boy eels stay behind and the girl eels travel inland. Years later, the grown eels will return as their parents did to their faraway breeding grounds.