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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
@greenleejw
Feb 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
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It's Valentine's Day, so let's talk about sex.

Eel sex!

Well...we can't, really.

We don't know exactly where, or how, eels get busy. It's a 2000+ year old puzzle. It's not like we haven't tried. But the sex life of eels is a mystery smothered in secret sauce. 1/5 Meme. Photograph of the sculpture "Eel Walker" by
All the eels in the Americas, Europe, and N. Africa are born at sea They migrate to land, live 10-20 yrs (or more!) and then go back to sea to mate & die.

They *probably* are all born, mate, & die in the Sargasso Sea. But we're not certain. 2/5 Meme. Map, showing N. America, Europe, Africa, and the Sarga
It's where we've found the smallest baby eels. And it's the area where radio-tracked eels have seemed to be headed towards before they disappear.

But no one has yet tracked an eel to their mating ground. And no one has ever seen them mate. 3/5 Meme. Photograph of an eel underwater. Text reads: "Can
Eels won't breed in captivity, & don't develop sexual organs until they start their journey back to sea.

At that point they stop eating, & survive on stored fat & by self-cannibalizing their own bones.Their digestive organs dissolve into their developing reproductive organs. 4/5 Meme. Photograph of an eel underwater, looking a the camera.
So. This Valentines Day, when your beloved -- or aspiring beloved! -- comes at you with chocolates or flowers, think about how they measure up to eels. Ask yourself:

"Would they eat their own bones just to be with me?"

Probably not. 'Cause no one's as romantic as an eel. /fin Meme. Two eels making a heart on a background of waves. Pink

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More from @greenleejw

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
Apr 12, 2024
Did you know that the US government once tried to transplant east coast eels to California? Weird but true!

It's a fun story. Train loads of eels! Crashes! Loss! Pyrrhic victory!

So. Settle in, friends, for a thread about some well-trained eels. 1/8 Meme. Photograph of an eel out of water. It looks very grumpy, and you would too if you were about to be kidnapped and taken by train to California. Meme text reads: "Talk about your coastal eelites" NB: This thread is too long for me to do much narrative alt-text. It would take me all day. So for today, just enjoy the story of the eels that went on a roadtrip.
Freshwater eels aren't native to the US Pacific Coast. All the eels in N. America come from the Sargasso Sea, & swim in waters that empty into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.

There are lots of lampreys on the W. coast. But no native eels.

But they wanted some. Like you do. 2/8 Image of the California state flag, showing a bear and star. The bear has a text bubble above it's head, which reads: "I wish I had an eel." The bear looks like it's done ok without eels. It's not starving. But that doesn't change the longing in its heart. Ursine's gonna ursine.
So in 1873 the famous fisheries expert Livingston Stone, working for the US Fisheries Commission & the CA Fisheries Commission, got to work.

He got 1,500 eels from Martha Vineyard, & 40,000 eels from the Hudson River, put them in an "aquarium car" on a train, & headed west. 3/8 Meme. Photograph of Livingston Stone. The picture is faded, but you can tell that he's an extra-white fellow. His eyes look like half-frozen water, and his beard and mustache are so 19th C. that you swear he was an actor at a steampunk con. Mext reads: "Who says you can't Trains eels?"
Read 8 tweets
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
May 4, 2023
Do you have a broken down old horse you want to sell? Need to make it seem young again?

Then, friend, you need an eel! In medieval & early modern England, horse sellers practiced feaguing: inserting a live eel into the horse's rectum to get the animal to act more lively. 1/5 Meme. Still from the movie ...
John Miton wrote about this in school, in 1628, saying that several of his skinny classmates would be good as horse suppositories. He said they'd make "scraggly horses...livelier and quicker than if they had ten live eels in their bellies.”

Classic stuff, Milton. 2/5 Meme. B&W drawing of John M...
In later times eels went out of style, and horse sellers began to use ginger, instead. We still have the phrase "to ginger up" as a part of our popular lexicon.

This comes up a couple of times in Terry Pratchett's books (among other places).

But before ginger, it was eels. 3/5 Meme. Movie poster from the...
Read 5 tweets
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
Apr 13, 2023
Congrats! You're the King of England! And you love you some eels.

But...there's a problem. But it's the 1660s, & you've banned the import of foreign eels & you can't get enough English eels to satisfy you. So what do you do?

If you're Charles II of England...you cheat! 1/5 Meme. Painting of Charles I...
Charles & Parliament had banned foreign (mostly Dutch) eels in 1666. But there weren't any English eel merchants in London. If Charles wanted eels, they'd have to come from Holland!

The king was hungry.

So he ordered his fish purchaser, Walter Underhill, to make it happen. 2/5 Meme. Painting of Charles I...
At first Underhill bought cargo from captured Dutch ships. But this wasn't good enough. The crown needed more!

So in 1669 Charles ordered Underhill to go to Holland & "import eels for the supply of his Majesty’s Household."

All while average Londoners had to go without. 3/5 Meme. Still from a B&W movi...
Read 5 tweets
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
Apr 12, 2023
In 1200 CE, people in England paid 540,000+ eels in rent each year. That's a lot, right? RIGHT?

Yes. But.

Those were *just* the eels for rent. People were catching & eating LOTS more. In 1290, fishermen in the village of Ramsey caught 365,000 eels, above & beyond rent eels. 1/4 Meme. Medieval painting of ...
"Wait...what?!" you say. "No way."

Yes, way.

The 1290 lay subsidy roll recorded that 9 fishermen in Ramsey caught 115k eels, while the surrounding region was recorded as hauling in an additional 250k.

So...365,000 eels being caught each year in one small town. *At least.* 2/4 Meme. Medieval painting of ...
Lay subsidy rolls frequently *undervalued* property, & mostly captured surplus materials bound for regional and interregional trade.

So 365k eels is probably an undercount, & only captured those eels destined for markets in London, Lincoln, etc.

So. Many. Eels. 3/4 Meme. A picture of a pile o...
Read 4 tweets
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
Apr 4, 2023
I had questions yesterday about eel smuggling. Questions like: "WFT?" & "Why? & "How?" So let's take a look.

Eel smuggling is maybe the biggest wildlife crime going. It's a c. 4 billion a year black market industry. Interpol has called it "Europe's ivory trade." 1/7 Slide showing headlines related to eel smuggling. These are
Eel is a popular food in Asia. But eels are endangered, & the demand can't be met locally anymore.

There's a legal trade from the US & other places. But that's not enough. The most ready source of eels is Europe, but since 2010 it's been illegal to export eels from the EU. 2/7 Meme. Photograph of an eel underwater, looking warily at the
About one billion baby eels, called glass eels, come ashore in Europe each year. And between 1/4 & 1/3 of them are fished illegally, and smuggled to China.

How?

Well...often in bags, in suitcases. You can get 10s of thousands in a suitcase, & they sell for €1 per eel. 3/7 Picture of a bag full of glass eels, being held in the handsPicture of a suitcase with bags full of glass eels, sitting
Read 7 tweets
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD Profile picture
Mar 14, 2023
It's #piDay2023...so let's talk about eel pie!

Eel pie has been an important English food for a long time. Medieval cookbooks often included eel pie recipes, & everyone from peasants to kings at them.

In 1256, Henry III demanded eel pies from his bailiff at Fetcham! 1/8 Meme. Medieval painting of Henry III being crowned. Meme tex
Eel pie was so common that not knowing how to cook one was recognized sign of stupidity. In King Lear, there's a cook who was so far gone that she tried to eels in the pie w/o killing them first.

It doesn't mean much to us, but Shakespeare's audience knew better.

Hilarious! 2/8 Meme. Painting of Shakespeare looking thoughtful while writi
Over time, eel pie became associated w/ London. Pie & mash shops were common, esp. in the East End, & there were several hundred in 19th century.

There aren't many left now, & E. End eel pies are kinda a tourist food. But you can still find an eel pie if you really need one. 3/8 Photograph of F. Cooke Pie & mash shop in London
Read 8 tweets

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