Science Stories: Series 1 - Eels and Human Electricity

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Naomi Alderman presents an alternate history of electricity. This is not a story of power stations, motors and wires. It is a story of how the electric eel and its cousin the torpedo fish, led to the invention of the first battery; and how, in time, the shocking properties of these slippery creatures gave birth to modern neuroscience.Our fascination with electric fish and their ability to deliver an almighty shock - enough to kill a horse – goes back to ancient times. And when Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in 1800, the electric eel was a vital source of inspiration. In inventing the battery, Volta claimed to have disproved the idea of ‘animal electricity’ but 200 years later, scientists studying our brains revealed that it is thanks to the electricity in our nerve cells that we are able to move, think and feel. So, it seems, an idea that was pushed out of science and into fiction, when Mary Shelley invented Frankenstein, is now alive and well and delivering insight once again into what it means to be alive.

(Photo: An eel. © Professor Ken Catania)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.
0:15.0	I'm Naomi Alderman. This episode of Discovery from the BBC is the story of a moment in the history of a moment in the history of science.
0:22.0	Imagine that you're a fisherman. in the history of science.
0:30.0	Imagine that you're a fisherman or fisher person in the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago.
0:40.0	You haul wet handfuls of netting out of the sea. You spot an interesting orange-colored fish in the net, a ray or torpedo fish. The naval weapon is named after it.
0:45.0	You peer closer.
0:48.0	And then something very shocking happens.
0:51.0	There's a painful jolt across your body. You start to shake, your hands and arms go numb.
0:56.8	You certainly drop the net now and the fish swims away.
1:01.3	And you have no clue what just happened.
1:07.0	This is the story of an idea that's been around for centuries but like that fish kept on just slipping out of our grasp.
1:17.5	We know now that like electric fish we human beings are electrical animals.
1:23.0	It's electric energy that lets us move, think and feel.
1:28.0	But it's taken a long time for us to understand animal electricity. Like a fisherman's tale of The One that
1:36.5	got away. This is the story of just how long it took us to land that slippery catch.
1:43.2	That's the sound of an electric eel,
1:51.0	electrocuting a crayfish.
1:55.0	These shocking creatures, along with their less powerful and glamorous cousins,
1:59.6	the electric torpedo fish, have fascinated scientists for centuries. the Lorde, one of us, one of the other, the more
2:15.0	plaure.
	...

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