Meet Miguel Wattson. Miguel is an electric eel with his own Twitter account, and is now responsible for bringing Christmas cheer to visitors by lighting the Christmas tree near his tank.
According to the Tennessee Aquarium website, the electric eel is capable of generating over 800 volts of electricity! It uses that large electrical discharge for defense and to stun prey. Most of the time they only generate about 10 volts for navigation and to locate prey because they have poor eyesight and live in murky waters. Electric eels have three different electrical organs that are made up of thousands of electrical generating cells called electrocytes.
And actually Miguel is not an eel at all. He is a freshwater knifefish, which are related to carp.
30,000 Twitter followers are fascinated with Miguel. According to the Aquarium: Check out our Electric Eels twitter page at https://twitter.com/EelectricMiguel. He tweets about whatever sparks his interest! (Learn more about how a team of experts set up a way for the eel to automatically posts messages whenever probes in his tank detect a strong-enough electrical discharge from him.)
So, if you are really charged up about Christmas and want to shock the family this holiday, go check out Miguel at the Chattanooga Aquarium and celebrate your first Noeel.
