We Finally Know Where Eels Come From

The European eel is a mysterious fish. They live for years without any reproductive organs, which made people very confused about where eels came from, all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. And up until recently, we still didn’t know.

Follow us on socials:
#BizarreBeasts #eels #fish
-----
Sources:
------
Images:

[pjyoung]

I did a project on european eels when I was at uni, back in 2017. Eel migration was still a bit of a mystery then, we literally had an eel expert in to answer questions and most of his answers were "we don't know yet". Cool to hear that 5-6 years later, a little more of the mystery has been solved!

[antispeedrun]

"Eels come from dead eels" is the most question-inducing answer I've ever heard in my life.

[Ass_of_Amalek]

nevermind the larval stage - adult eels go from living 25+ years in freshwater, migrating kilometers over land when it rains (you forgot to mention that part) to all sorts of ponds and lakes not even connected to the ocean to migrating back through the ocean at depths of up to 1400m?! goddamn that's a crazy fish!
also that ~25 year age minimum for breeding, and spawning just one time before dying, explains my confusion about hearing that european eels are nowadays considered to be a highly threatened species [edit: IUCN critically endangered, the closest category to extinction] after previously being one of the most common and cheap fish everybody took for granted. 😬 I think we have a passenger fish situation on our hands. though in terms of reproduction, it's more like whaling or fishing greenland sharks.

[DanThePropMan]

I will never understand why things that have no flavor become "delicacies". Shark fin is like this too, and even worse. Fishers catch them, hack the fins off, and leave them to die. It devastates shark populations. Shark fin is flavorless and the texture is weird, and yet it's still considered a delicacy and a status symbol.

[dracognia]

There's a phenomenal book by Patrik Svensson called "Ålevangeliet" ("The Eel Gospels") that studies the murky and enigmatic nature and history of eels. It tells the tale of the Sargasso migration told about in this video, but also chronicles mankind's attempt to locate their genitalia (Sigmund Freud studied eels for years in his youth; the book strongly hints that his later frustrations derive from his failure to locate eel genitalia), and how eels that are stuck in earlier states of being (such as as yellow eels) kind of seem to not age, like at all, over literal decades. The book has also been turned into an opera.

[NewMessage]

The real mystery is... Who looked at those things and thought: 'Pie. This belongs in a pie."

[WobblesandBean]

Hi! Marine biologist/zoologist here. We have seen eels travel to the Sargasso Sea en masse once a year and then baby eels swim back to the freshwater systems they grow up in. But because science is science, it can't be stated as mystery solved until the spawning behavior is witnessed in real time.

[knpark]

The race to find the youngest eel in nature is like the race to be the first commenter on Youtube. It's been around for ages and they look really different from an average specimen.

[DLnOR]

Interesting. I'm now 71, and well over 50 years ago, when I was in my early teens, my father told me that the eels all migrate to the Sargasso Sea, and that's where the larvae are found. So I guess the new breakthrough is that we have found mature adult eels at the end of the migration, actually entering the Sargasso Sea.

[lise]

The oldest European eel was supposedly 150 + years old (the Brantevik eel). They were kept in wells to keep the water clean and has since been found in many old wells, still alive.

[Ash-fdww]

Baby eels look like the proto animals I used to see in the old discovery shows and personally I think that's very neat

[jackflash]

Now the question that remains is "Why the Sargasso Sea" was it where they first evolved into their current body style?

[romandybala]

Hey, what about our eels in the Southern Hemisphere? They travel far inland and even cross damp fields then return to the Pacific Ocean to reproduce. Amazing creatures.

[altareggo]

The history of how eels make baby eels, is like the entire history of science!! Progressions form "eels come from dead eels or pieces of eel skin - or maybe sunlight reflecting off the Nile..." to more and more precise data/information, and the use of sophisticated tools and instruments to gather solid imperical data which helps eventually lead to TRUTH, lol. Bravo, science!!

[XiOjala]

Looking back in my fishing diaries eels were fairly common in freshwater and near the coast until 1993. In the last 30 years I have only caught (and returned) three small ones. Eels now have protected status by the Environment Agency as they are endangered. Adult eels ae pretty tough cookies and can tolerate poor conditions better than most fish. At one time eels were the only fish able to survive in the river Thames. So it can't simply be pollution of our freshwaters that is leading to their demise. I suspect there is something nasty afoot in the Sargasso Sea.

[sbadapple]

I wanna be an eel - only having reproductive organs when I feel like it

[seansimpson]

Glass eels fishing has been cancelled this year in Atlantic Canada, but there are hundreds of poachers who have decided not to pay attention.

I live on a tidal river, and my backyard is the first stream that enters the river and it is a breeding area for the eels.

They are now endangered in my area.

[paulkinzer]

Over my lifetime, I've read again and again about the mystery of eel migration and reproduction. It's been a real obsession for some folks.

But the most important lesson I feel from this video is this: these guys are really cute! In each stage of life, too. Another critter that looks like it's serenely smiling. I know it's not, but I don't care! They aren't harmed by my anthropomorphizing.

[murkyseb]

The glass eels have another name, they’re called elvers which I think is amazing. The Australian and surrounding countries eels are also just as strange and nobody is sure where or how they reproduce just that it’s somewhere near New Caledonia. I love finding them in the wild when I’m out filming for my documentaries, they can be so far up rivers that have multiple waterfalls and seemingly impassable terrain but somehow still get there

[flamencoprof]

New Zealand has a native eel which also spawns in the ocean, but it is still not known for certain exactly where in the Pacific that is. I have seen "Near Tonga" and "Near New Caledonia" mentioned.