How to Use electric eel in a Sentence

electric eel

noun
  • Who wins when an electric eel goes up against a human's arm in the lab?
    — National Geographic, 14 Sep. 2017
  • Neon art flickers on the walls like electric eels swimming in the distance.
    — Soleil Ho, SFChronicle.com, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Scientists have long assumed there was only one species of electric eel.
    — Eva Frederick, Science | AAAS, 10 Sep. 2019
  • Scientists have long known that electric eels are indeed electric.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 22 Oct. 2024
  • But even now, the electric eel isn’t done inspiring scientists.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 13 Dec. 2017
  • Most people would do everything possible to avoid getting zapped by an electric eel.
    — National Geographic, 14 Sep. 2017
  • The ridiculous 15-minute scene also involved puppeteers who made an electric eel appear to speak.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 27 May 2022
  • Scientists long thought the electric eels found in swamps, streams, creeks and rivers across South America were all the same species.
    — Julia Hollingsworth, CNN, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Essentially, that would turn humans into something closer to an electric eel.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 13 Dec. 2017
  • These shocks were nearly ten times as powerful as a taser, and electric eels can get much larger in size with even more powerful shocks that can be lethal to animals.
    — Ben Panko, Smithsonian, 18 Sep. 2017
  • The organ within the electric eel is a series of ionized tissue layers that can produce an electric charge when excited.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 13 Dec. 2017
  • The electrocytes of an electric eel are large and flat, with hundreds stacked together horizontally.
    — Emily Matchar, Smithsonian, 17 Jan. 2018
  • The paralyzing blasts of electricity that an electric eel delivers arise from a sleeve of tissue that wraps around the animal’s body.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2025
  • In theory, this means that electric eels could be contributing to the genetic modification of other species in the wild.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Dec. 2023
  • The post included a throwaway line about how the aquarium vets also had the lowdown on how to give an electric eel an MRI.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 14 Dec. 2021
  • One species, Volta's electric eel (Electrophorus voltai), can produce a discharge of up to 860 volts.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 17 July 2024
  • De Santana and the team collected more than 100 electric eel specimens to make their hypothesis about the three species.
    — Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY, 24 Sep. 2018
  • Just one, the ability to use electrical currents for communication and hunting—think electric eels—happened first, and only, in water.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 11 Oct. 2017
  • In this brutally violent revenge thriller, deaths are inflicted by fire, industrial shredder, pressure chamber, and electric eel.
    — Chris Nashawaty, EW.com, 29 May 2024
  • Few people would consider willingly getting shocked by an electric eel, but one bold biologist subjected himself repeatedly to the zaps in the name of science.
    — Ben Panko, Smithsonian, 18 Sep. 2017
  • Scientists at Penn State have developed a flexible, high-power hydrogel battery inspired by electric eels.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 29 Jan. 2026
  • While 250 species of fish in South America generate electricity, only electric eels use it to stun prey and for self-protection.
    — Fox News, 12 Sep. 2019
  • In September, a study in the journal Nature Communications concluded that the electric eel should be divided into three separate species.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Michael Mayer, a biophysicist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and his colleagues are working to mimic the electric organs in electric eels and other fish.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Researchers had previously identified only one species of electric eel in more than 250 years of studying the creatures that lurk in South American waters and stun their prey with electric discharges.
    — Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY, 24 Sep. 2018
  • The team layered multiple types of hydrogels, including water-rich, conductive materials, in a precise pattern that mimics the ionic processes electric eels use to produce bursts of electricity.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 29 Jan. 2026
  • The concept of producing electricity from ion movement is not new, and as Kim explained, electric eels use a similar principle in nature, generating electrical bursts by controlling ion flow across specialized cells known as electrocytes.
    — Bojan Stojkovski, Interesting Engineering, 21 June 2026
  • Scientists now know the electrochemical reactions between dissimilar materials that Volta discovered have nothing to do with the way an electric eel generates its electricity.
    — Timothy J. Jorgensen, The Conversation, 9 May 2022
  • Since their discovery more than 250 years ago by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, researchers have thought the electric eel was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, with only one species, Electrophorus electricus.
    — Roni Dengler, Discover Magazine, 9 Sep. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'electric eel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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