As of November 2026, scientists know of at least three species of electric eel, not one. An electric eel is a fish, but it is not a true eel. It is more closely related to catfish and carp than to true eels. It has a long, snake-like body and a flat head. It has thick skin with no scales. It is dark on top, with a yellow or orange part underneath. It grows to be about 8 feet, or 2.5 meters, long. As of November 2026, the heaviest published weight is 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

Electric eels live in rivers and ponds in South America. Many live in quiet, slow-moving, muddy water in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins, and some also live in muddy lowland waters. An electric eel has gills like other fish, but it cannot live without air. The water can be low in oxygen, so the eels breathe air. An eel comes up to the top of the water to breathe. It gets about 80 percent of its oxygen by gulping air at the surface. In the dry season the water in the rivers drops, and eels can be left in small pools.

An electric eel makes electricity with special cells called electrocytes. It has thousands of them. The electrocytes work like a stack of batteries. An eel's electric organ is made of hundreds of thousands of flat cells connected in a line, like a long string of battery cells. An electric eel has three electric organs, and most of its body is electric organ. Most of the time an electric eel makes only a weak charge, about 10 volts or less.

Electric eels hunt at night. An eel does not see well, so it uses the weak charge to find its way and to find prey. Electric eels also use weak electric pulses to talk to each other. An eel can make an electric shock that stuns the animals it eats. Young electric eels eat mostly small animals without backbones, such as insects and crustaceans. Adults eat mostly fish.

Words to know

• species: kind of animal
• gills: fish breathing parts
• electrocytes: power cells
• lowland: low ground
• prey: food animals