Eelapalooza

Eels resemble snakes in shape, but they’re fish, not reptiles. They don’t have a prominent pectoral fin—those little fins beside the head of the fish that help with navigation—so eels appear even more snake-like with their wiggling movements.

Like snakes, eels also shed their skin when they grow. Also like snakes, eels are carnivorous predators.

That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Like all fish, eels “breathe” through their gills, extracting oxygen from the water and extruding carbon dioxide. While eels don’t have prominent pectoral fins, they do have helpful sort of mega-fin that runs along the eel’s back and sides.

Maybe the most interesting thing about eels is that nobody in human history has ever seen them reproduce. Seriously, this has been an ongoing mystery and an unsolved problem of sorts in biology for millennia.

Aristotle suggested that eels might be created by means of spontaneous generation. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, arising from the mud like somethi…