The eel.
January 2026
Eels and humans share a long history. They have been as culturally significant as they are baffling and it pleases me to say they still baffle us. Aristoteles wrote in his history of animals that:
“Some people believe they generate, because in some eels small worms are found; and they suppose eels are formed out of these. This is a mistake. They are formed out of the so-called “earths-guts,” spontaneously in mud and soggy soil.” (Historia Animalum VI. XVI).
Not little worms then, but earth guts, like a stage 1 Pokemon levelling up. Hold on to that analogy.
The apparently asexual being puzzled many cultures. To ancient Egyptians, the eel spawned from the sun rays warming up the Nile, whereas Romans mature eels would rub their dead skin against rocks, to produce babies from sheds of skin. Findings of eel ovaries by an Italian surgeon in 1777 did not change popular belief. Humanity clearly liked the myth too much.
And it was just as well, because just like the Catholics missionaries in South America convinced the Pope that the Capybara was a fish so that it could be eaten during lent, so was the eel without sexual organs, and could therefore be eaten in times when animals who engaged in sexual acts, could not.
This question of where the eggs are, if there are eggs, attracted also cultural fan favourite Sigmund Freud. A medicine student in 1876, already interested in genitalia at the tender age of 19, he took it upon himself to uncover the mystery. A month and 400 dissected eel bodies later, he confessed in a sombre report that no genitalia had been found.
Now, as it turns out, eels can have sexual organs. They just only produce them in their fourth and final metamorphisis. The first three stages before then, go without.
Nowadays, we know a little more about eels, thanks to a few individuals with a near neurotic fascination for the animal. It was Danish scientist Johannes Schmidt who set to sea on four separate expeditions between 1904 to 1930 to discover eels once and for all.
On the assumption that they bred in the Mediterranean, he travelled on his special expedition ship, casting out the nets by the simple method to follow the direction where the average size of eels would be smaller, in the hope to follow this to eventually find the grounds where the eels were the smallest, and therefore be at the spawning ground.
This led him across the Atlantic towards the Caribbean.
Johannes Schmidt - Linda Hall Library
Of course, such endeavour is highly time and resource intensive, and relies on brute force and massive data collection reminiscent of AI efforts. So it was just as well that Schmidt married into the Carlsberg family, the Danish Brewery which has funded plenty of scientific endeavours. They continued to fund him for over 20 years. Until, by process of elimination, he was able to produce a map of eel sizes and arrived at the conclusion that they must be born somewhere near the Bermuda triangle, in the waters called the Sargasso sea. He did not, however, find eggs, and neither did he observe eels mating. Nevertheless, Schmidt was rewarded for his relentless work with several medals for solving the eel question, but has he really?
It is a scarcely believable fact that until this day, no dead or live eel has been spotted by human eyes in the Sargasso sea. 100 years of scientific research has secured us the satellite data in 2022 of a full seven (!!) live eels which actually have reached this sea, with hundreds of others known to swim towards it, but losing trackers or dying on their journey.
There are Japanese and American and European eels, which are different species, distinguishable by their vertebrae count, their breeding ground and minute genetics, but we do know more about the Japanese eel than the European and American counterparts: They spawn a few days before the new moon near the Mariana trench, around 150-200 metres under the surface, before the currents of the seas carry them far far away from their crib. I have fact-checked this.
Eels are classed as endangered, but only speculation knows what could help them recover. Growing human developments reduced eel populations, in the UK by 95% since the 1980s, which were once abundant protein for the working classes in East London, fished fresh from the Thames.
Climate change might have had an impact. Overfishing probably does. Eels are considered a delicacy in some places, and poor harvests have 2024 driven prices of the glass eels to $15,000 per kg in Japan, and a respectable $5,000 per kg for elvers in Canada. That is because aquaculture proves difficult. Eels must be caught in the wild and fed in farms, as they apparently refuse to produce eggs in captivity. Since the 2011 Tsunami in Japan destroyed a world-class facility, production capacities have not reached their previous peak. At least we know how to feed them: captive eels might grow within seven months to a size they reach in 25 years in the wild.
I find this all bordering on magic. The slipperiness of eels extends beyond their skin; it seems to be their spirit. I remember reading a book on space in my teenage years, and thought, this is it, man has been on the moon, we build rockets and next thing we live in space. But I did not anticipate asking myself: What will we know first: how to live on Mars or how the eel reproduces?
Some sources for you to make an educated guess:
Johannes Schmidt - Linda Hall Library
The Mysterious, Vexing, and Utterly Engrossing Search for the Origin of Eels | Hakai Magazine
ARISTOTLE, History of Animals | Loeb Classical Library]
The untold story of London's original fast food - BBC Travel
Eel traps in the River Thames, 1885. Henry Taunt
AI Prompt: Te Japanese eel spawn a few days before the new moon, around 150-200 metres under the surface, before the currents of the seas carry them far far away from their crib.
