Thursday, December 5, 2019
This Christmas tree is shocking.
An Aquarium in Tennessee has found a way to use its electric eel to power Christmas lights and spark some awe in holiday visitors.
The eel, named Miguel Wattson, releases low-voltage bolts of electricity whenever he’s looking for food — and a special machine hooked up to his tank uses the shocks to light up the nearby tree. The intensity of the flashes depends on what he’s currently doing and how he is feeling.
“The bigger flashes are caused by the higher voltage shocks he emits when he’s eating or excited,” Kimberly Hurt, an aquarist at Tennessee Aquarium, said in a press release.
Wattson, who has his own popular Twitter account with over 30,000 followers, posted a video of himself “shocking” around the Christmas tree.
ICYMI, here’s a video of yours truly attempting to use my discharges to power the lights on a Christmas tree. (SPOILER ALERT ::: Of course I pull it off. My phenomenal cosmic — well, bio-electric — power is basically limitless.) pic.twitter.com/g4r5JPHWoH
— Miguel Wattson TNAQ (@EelectricMiguel) December 2, 2019
In fact, the clever eel even powers his own Twitter account. Coders at Tennessee Tech University’s iCube center created the algorithm, powered by his jolts, in 2015 to help give Wattson a voice and an ability to better engage with the public.
He typically tweets out fun messages like “za-BOOSH!!!!,” “KRASNAPPA-TAT!!!” and, most recently, “BAZINGG!!!”.
The aquarium hopes its latest festive effort will spur further interest in the freshwater fish.
–by Lauren Tousignant New York Post