Talk:Electric eel

Move

All information that is common in the genus should be moved from Electrophorus electricus to here. Esp. the text, not just the pics. --Ernsts (talk) 10:08, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

• Agree, Ernsts. See also Talk:Electric eel#Proposed split. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:06, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

FAC

Chiswick Chap. I'm thinking we should describe the eel's external appearance. In addition, we could also use this for its phylogenetic tree of Gymnotiformes. LittleJerry (talk) 14:59, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Ok. I've made a tree, and illustrated it with photos and electric icons: interesting. The external appearance is a bit tricky as all authors before 2019 thought they were dealing with one species, E. electricus, but we now know they were dealing with any of the 3 species, i.e. E. electricus sensu lato (genus), only they didn't ... so they have probably not adequately described the variability of the genus. It's more than likely that the species are typically of different sizes, for instance. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:07, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap. I'm not sure we should cite a PH.D thesis, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Also, where in the sources does it state that eels have rectangular mouths? LittleJerry (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

The thesis is fine, it got the top score, summary cum laude, and he's written papers since about the discoveries he made so it's easily defended. I've provides description details from Albert 2001. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:42, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap I think one more thing needed is the splitting off of the different species. After that I'm thinking it could use another review. Maybe Mover of molehills could look it over? LittleJerry (talk) 18:07, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to edit and to I vote as you like. I'm not sure what you mean by splitting off as all 3 spp. already have their own articles, so we don't want to duplicate those here? Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:13, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I mean writing about the evolutionary split of the three species and the timing of it. LittleJerry (talk) 18:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Do you feel like doing that? Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Fact Verification (Vertebrae)

shouldn't this article cite a source for the "growing more vertebrae as they age" comment at the top of the page? i feel like that's something you need to back up with a study or something Cat-with-the-'tism (talk) 19:39, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

This information is referenced in the second paragraph of Electric eel#Lifecycle. —Arsonal (talk + contribs)— 21:19, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Description date

The article indicates that Linnaeus was the first to originally describe electic eels in 1766 but then in the infobox Gronovius and Houttyn are listed as descriptors in 1760 and 1764. TheEld2 (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The species is universally recorded as described formally by Linnaeus 1766. Earlier attempts have been taken by taxonomists as invalid; this was a common occurrence before the process of description became somewhat better standardised. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)