Scientists Figured Out How Eels Reproduce (2022)

Aristotle spent serious time on this and concluded eels spontaneously generated from mud, that's not a knock on him, you genuinely cannot find reproductive organs in a wild eel because they don't develop until the final migration, it took satellite tagging in 2018 to actually confirm what was happening. A 2,300 year old mystery closed by a GPS tracker is a good reminder that some problems just had to wait for the right instrument

I remember being fascinated by animals as a kid and the mystery of where eels went was one of the big unsolved puzzles I remember hearing about.

Much more recently I heard on QI about how medieval people, not knowing about migration, believed, through a lot of leaps, that it was ok to eat barnacle geese at lent. Worth investigating if you are curious :)

The click bait version adds “and it’s electrifying”.

Fascinating how certain animals have evolved with complex migration patterns to breeding grounds. And unfortunate that 95% of the population has already collapsed.

Makes me wonder what the world was like before this last great extinction.