#eel things

Clearly interrupting this big guy’s check up at the dentist 🦷🪥

Eelvis is great, thanks! Growing into a big boy, well, eel.

(Eels are very difficult to actually accurately sex. Some have no dimorphism. Some gymnothorax change sex as they grow, and you’d only know because they change color or teeth… we actually really don’t understand a lot about their reproduction and biology. They’re very very cool and mysterious and I think that’s the way they like it. Bowie would’ve been a better name but I digress. He’s probably male because he’s staying fairly small, but he might change his mind one day)

Likes to wear shells as a hat, I encourage all his interests 😌

Ain’t he gorgeous? 🥰

He’s a clever little guy, and very curious! Likes to pose. Likes to get a scritch.

Alright, let’s break this down 🙂‍↔️

Eels are not slimy, creepy or useless. They’re one of the most extraordinary species we’ve got. They migrate thousands of miles through open ocean with no GPS, no sonar, nothing but instincts we still don’t fully understand. They start life in the Sargasso Sea and end up in rivers they’ve never seen, and they do it with a success rate that would put most human expeditions to shame.

Eels are smart. Like, problem-solving smart. They learn patterns. They recognise safe spaces. Some species have been shown to navigate mazes, remember food sources, and even work cooperatively when hunting. They can escape tanks, open latches, and sneak food out of places they’re absolutely not supposed to reach. You don’t do that without a brain ticking away behind the eyes.

And (hot take incoming) I actually think they’re gorgeous. Some of them are downright adorable. Yes, I said it. Don’t @ me. If you ever bothered to look at them up close (the right kind of up close, not the ‘I poked one with a stick once’ kind), you’d see how expressive and elegant they are.

But here’s the bigger point: even if you personally don’t find them cute or interesting, conservation isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest. A species doesn’t need fluffy ears or big cartoon eyes or be willing to be cuddled and tamed to deserve protection. The ocean works because of the weird stuff, the underappreciated stuff, the ‘ew what’s that’ stuff and eels are right at the centre of a lot of ecosystems. These guys deserve just as much love as all the cute lil’ mammals that everyone pays to adopt and gets a cuddly toy of etc (I would personally fight for a big cuddly eel).

And as for being ‘too handsome’? Thanks. But the eels don’t care what I look like. They care about clean water, safe breeding grounds, and humans not wrecking the only home they’ve ever known.

Hello there!

Eelvis is doing awesome, thanks for asking!

He’s a very sweet little guy, has a lovely temperament and seems to have figured out I’m the hand that feeds, so don’t nibble! At least with tongs anyway.

(Please nobody go and try and pet a moray if they’re diving a reef. Jaws open wide, more jaws inside, put your hand in that crack and you won’t get it back, THATS A MORAY)

Anyway, this dude knows nothing about that, he’s just happy being the captain of the SS Toofle.

He’s a blackedge moray eel (gymnothorax saxicola for my fellow nerds). He’s still just a lil guy, although he won’t get nearly as big as some of his cousins out in the reef.