Why are eels slippery?
One of the creepiest animals you can encounter in the water is the eel. It’s a slippery, slimy creature, and it doesn’t fit neatly into the water creature categories we’ve set up in our brains, which only amplifies our fear of it. Is it a snake? A fish? An unholy hybrid of both? Actually, the eel is just a regular fish — that doesn’t look like one. It has a serpentlike head and a snakelike body. And it also has a scary-looking face. If you’ve ever spotted one while snorkeling, you probably did an about-face after you got a glimpse of its snapping jaw and sharp teeth. That frightening mouth opening and closing, though, is just the eel “breathing” — not a sign of aggression. You’ll find eels in nearly every ocean and sea. The green moray eel is the most common and well-known eel, but there are
One of the creepiest animals you can encounter in the water is the eel. It’s a slippery, slimy creature, and it doesn’t fit neatly into the water creature categories we’ve set up in our brains, which only amplifies our fear of it. Is it a snake? A fish? An unholy hybrid of both? Actually, the eel is just a regular fish — that doesn’t look like one. It has a serpentlike head and a snakelike body. And it also has a scary-looking face. If you’ve ever spotted one while snorkeling, you probably did an about-face after you got a glimpse of its snapping jaw and sharp teeth. That frightening mouth opening and closing, though, is just the eel “breathing” — not a sign of aggression. You’ll find eels in nearly every ocean and sea. The green moray eel is the most common and well-known eel, but there
