- 6 months ago
Documentary, River Monsters S03E05 Electric Eel
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00I'm Jeremy Wade, biologist and monster wrangler.
00:14I've spent the last 25 years travelling the globe, bringing in these giants.
00:20There it is! Look at that for a feast!
00:25Much of this time was in Brazil, where I've caught many monsters before.
00:29Red-bellied piranha.
00:34I'm back to investigate a new story about a triple homicide.
00:40The people who fell in the water actually disappeared.
00:43This is like no creature I've tackled before.
00:46But this thing is different. It has invisible powers.
00:49Chasing this monster takes me into the heart of Brazil's rugged frontier,
00:53where people fear for my life.
00:55He says it will kill you. No two ways about it.
00:58And it leads to possibly the strangest monster catch of my career.
01:03I've chased river monsters all over the world, but I've always considered Brazil my second home.
01:18There's the fish! There's the fish!
01:33This is where I've done most of my fishing.
01:35Look at this!
01:37Catching all manner of freshwater killers.
01:41I've been drawn back by a chilling story about the death of a group of cowboys.
01:46I've heard of a river monster taking an individual before.
01:52But never three people at once.
02:01This is a new killer for me.
02:07My journey begins in Brazil's wild west.
02:12Para state is cowboy country and outsiders rarely visit.
02:17But I'm on my way to meet an eyewitness to the cowboys' deaths.
02:22I'm travelling by boat along the Tokantins river, so I can start fishing immediately and see what killers are in this area.
02:35During the wet season, this river is connected to the place where the cowboys died,
02:40so the monster could have escaped into these waters.
02:43I don't know yet what could be down there, so I have to be prepared for anything.
02:52This is actually a fish I bought down the market this morning.
02:54It's just a tasty, scaly fish.
02:56I'm just going to cut the tail off and use that, I think.
03:00It's a big river, this, and so what you're not doing is casting at random,
03:04because the fish won't be distributed at random.
03:06But what we've got here is quite turbulent, and it's also moving back on itself near the bank,
03:11so it's the kind of place where food coming down the river would settle,
03:15and that's going to cause the small fish to congregate and then right on up the food chain.
03:30One thing at the bottom.
03:34It's not long before I get my first bite.
03:37Oh, I think something's nibbling that.
03:47Yep.
03:52That's a piranha.
03:53It's a black piranha.
03:54The black piranha is the largest of the piranha family.
04:01Growing up to a foot and a half long.
04:05A mouth full of razor-sharp teeth has given piranhas a fearsome reputation.
04:12And it's well-earned.
04:14Two years ago, I found a story about a young boy who was devoured by piranhas in front of his grandparents.
04:19All they got in was bones.
04:24It's unlikely that piranhas would have killed all three cowboys.
04:30But I know from experience that you've got to keep an open mind.
04:34Only eliminating a suspect after you've heard all the evidence,
04:38which is why I'm meeting a witness tomorrow.
04:43Before I track him down, I'll see what other potential suspects are here.
04:49It must be a predator's paradise down there.
04:53Within minutes, something else has grabbed my bait.
04:57Oh!
04:58This feels much bigger than a black piranha.
05:05Gosh, this is strong.
05:07This is strong.
05:09It's rising up in the water. There it is.
05:10Oh, it's a ray! It's a ray!
05:12What size are that?
05:13This is the first spotted river ray I've ever caught.
05:19I've come across stingrays before.
05:21In Thailand, I've seen how they can seriously injure people.
05:24I want to take a closer look, but I'm not sure how to safely haul it into the boat.
05:31My worry with this fish is getting too close to it.
05:35It's tail has a venomous spike five inches long,
05:42which could whip round and stab me as I pull it in.
05:48Taking it to shore and pulling it onto the bank is the best option.
05:55On close inspection, I'm reminded that this can kill as well.
06:01That spine there, very dangerous.
06:03It's just like a knife, five inches long.
06:05That would go in your flesh very easily, be very painful.
06:08And actually, if that's in the wrong part of your body,
06:09that could puncture an artery, that could be fatal.
06:11And these here, look at those, they don't look very nice either.
06:13Like Piranha, this is an unlikely suspect for killing three people at the same time.
06:20But I'll need to hear the witness's account before I can take it off the list.
06:24I've arranged to meet him near where the deaths occurred, just outside the small town of El Dorado.
06:35For the last leg of my journey, I leave the boat behind and drive cross-country.
06:45I'm comfortable in the Brazilian rainforest, but this area is unfamiliar to me and I'm not sure what to expect.
06:55The whole area was cleared decades ago by ranchers and gold prospectors.
07:08All the wild animals were chased out or killed, making it safe for livestock and humans.
07:13But it seems that a deadly water predator has managed to cling on.
07:25The cowboys' deaths are still raw in the minds of many, and I've been refused access to where they died.
07:33I meet the witness, Reginaldo, at a nearby farm instead.
07:36He tells me that it happened during the wet season, when the pastures were flooded.
07:46A mule had become stuck in the water.
07:51Reginaldo and five other cowboys tried to rescue it.
07:56What they had to do was actually sort of go in and just try and pull the antel out.
07:59The first three cowboys went into the water.
08:07Reginaldo and the others hung back.
08:14As the first horses got up to their bellies, something startled them.
08:23All three cowboys were thrown into the water.
08:29The others immediately got out, before it was too late.
08:32It was too late.
08:38I just asked why he didn't just jump straight in to try and help them.
08:41And he said something told me there was something in the water.
08:42It wasn't safe.
08:44He didn't want to be number four, the fourth victim.
08:49People who fell in the water actually disappeared.
08:51And we're talking water that was, it sounds like three or four feet deep.
08:54I asked him what that leaves him feeling like.
08:57This was six years ago that it happened and he said it's left this sort of lingering sadness from having lost his colleagues.
09:10Reginaldo's story helps me eliminate some potential suspects.
09:14Piranhas can definitely be taken off the list.
09:17When piranhas attack, it's an unmistakable feeding frenzy, with the water looking as though it's boiling.
09:25But Reginaldo saw only a calm surface.
09:29Also, from Reginaldo's account, stingrays can be struck off the list.
09:35If the cowboys had been fatally stabbed by rays, there would have been huge amounts of blood in the water, which he didn't see.
09:41Reginaldo has his own theory about the killer's identity.
09:50He's given me the name of a terrifying new suspect for the cowboy killer.
09:55It's a creature I've heard about, but never encountered.
10:11I'm in Brazil, searching for a monster that killed three cowboys.
10:18My eyewitness to the event has just given me the name of the prime suspect.
10:25It's a terrifying fish that I've never caught before.
10:29The electric eel.
10:30No, he says, although he didn't actually see anything, I mean, he's pretty certain that, you know, this was electric eels that caused these three men to die.
10:43I have a prime suspect.
10:46A monster said to have mythical pirates.
10:49And one I always feared I might encounter.
10:52Now I have to try to catch one.
10:57Known locally as Porake, the electric eel isn't actually an eel at all.
11:03It's a member of the knife fish family.
11:07They can be found throughout the Amazon and Orinoco river basins.
11:10They can grow to over eight feet long and deliver a charge that's enough to light up a house.
11:21But is this enough to shock a human being to death?
11:29I've heard stories about electric eels killing people before, but they've never been proven.
11:34I've also heard of murderers blaming electric eels to cover their misdeeds.
11:42But could an eel really kill three people at one time?
11:47I have my doubts.
11:49There are many other animals in these waters that are documented killers, such as anacondas and caimans.
11:57Victims of these predators bear the telltale marks of bites or strangulation.
12:01Clues that help identify the culprit.
12:05A victim of electrocution would have no such marks.
12:10My job now is to find out what state the cowboys' corpses were in when they were recovered.
12:17To do this, Reginaldo has put me in contact with a man called Hermes.
12:22He discovered the bodies the next day.
12:29He tells me that the grim search for the three bodies started where the cowboys disappeared.
12:43They actually got boats with motors in the water and they were driving those around to create a disturbance.
12:53The wash from the propellers would churn up anything lying below the surface.
12:59There were no bite marks or anything like that on the bodies.
13:18Having no bites is in line with the prime suspect being an electric eel.
13:22And Hermes has one final revelation about the recovered bodies.
13:35All three had their hands clenched and inside the hands were weed or grass from the bottom of the water.
13:42Clenched hands are a telltale clue.
13:50When a person receives a large electric shock, the body's muscles begin to spasm.
13:56Which could explain why the cowboys died with their hands clenched.
14:01This is all strong evidence that an electric eel might be responsible for the cowboys' deaths.
14:06But I wonder how much real proof I'm going to find.
14:13I've got to catch one and see for myself what these fish are capable of.
14:22Normally I can see what I'm up against.
14:27Massive teeth, cavernous mouths and tails that can fatally stab you.
14:31The electric eel's invisible powers make it unlike any fish I've gone after before.
14:39I'm hoping to gain some local knowledge at the town's fish market.
14:46The people here are those most likely to have come up against them.
14:52Everywhere I look are toothy, dangerous fish.
14:59But electric eels aren't on the menu.
15:02I'll just take this thing of porake, man.
15:03I'll just take the shock.
15:05Fishermen don't fish for them, but the reason they don't fish for them is that they say the shock is very powerful.
15:12Electric eels, or porake, have been striking fear into people's hearts since long before Europeans arrived in the 16th century.
15:19Before electricity was understood, Brazil's indigenous Tupi people told of a warrior who carelessly dropped a lightning bolt on an eel, giving the fish its mysterious power.
15:33In reality, it's the eel's specially adapted muscles that generate the large shocks.
15:44But does this electricity kill somebody outright, or do they drown after being paralysed?
15:49When I tell people about my mission to catch one, they're in no doubt about what will happen to me, one way or the other.
15:59He says it will kill you, no two ways about it.
16:02No, no, don't mess with it, basically, don't mess with it.
16:06What I said, is it strong enough to kill? He said, yeah, absolutely, no doubt about it.
16:09It's looking like it could be a bit of a mission.
16:18I would normally try to apprehend my suspect at the scene of the crime.
16:23But quite apart from the ranch owner's sensitivities, I'm here at the height of the dry season.
16:27The water levels have dropped, and the spot where the cowboys died is now just pasture.
16:36All the fish are now concentrated in the remaining water, in theory making them easier to find.
16:44It's possible that the monster could have moved into the nearest big river, the Araguaia.
16:49One thing is playing on my mind.
16:55Since nobody fishes for electric eels, I haven't been able to get any advice on how to catch them.
17:03I've been warned they're elusive, and tend to show up when least expected.
17:12All I can realistically do is put a bait in the water, and hope an electric eel takes it before something else does.
17:17The thing is, there's loads of predators in these waters, so I've got a bait on the bottom here, but there's lots of other species that could pick it up.
17:31There's no way really to single out the electric eel.
17:34I know I'm doing the right thing to catch one, but something else could beat it to the bait.
17:40Because I don't want to get a nasty shock when I catch an electric eel, I'm taking some precautions.
17:45The nylon line I'm using won't conduct electricity, so I'll be safe while bringing it in.
17:52Then, once I get it to the boat, I have a thick pair of rubber boots and gloves, which means I'll be able to handle it without getting shocked.
18:00My theory that the fish should be more concentrated here seems to be correct, as something takes my bait within a matter of minutes.
18:15Good-sized fish, good-sized fish.
18:20Is this the electric eel I've been looking for?
18:27The electric eel is known locally as the Porake.
18:30You'll be shocked to hear what this means in the Tupi indigenous language, right after this.
18:40In the Tupi indigenous language, Porake means the one who sends you to sleep.
18:45I'm in Brazil, on the Araguaia River, trying to catch my first electric eel, the prime suspect for killing three cowboys.
19:03There's something on the end of my line, and it's putting up a powerful fight.
19:10I don't think this is an electric eel. It's too strong.
19:15The back four-fifths of an electric eel's body is mostly used to produce electricity.
19:20It doesn't have the muscle to put up a struggle like this.
19:26Oh, yeah, yeah, see the bubbles coming out? That's a big red-tailed catfish, big red-tailed catfish.
19:37Out of the water, it gulps in air, blowing it out through its gill flaps.
19:44Got it, got it, got it, got it.
19:45Very strong fish, but it tends to not have the stamina.
19:51But, I mean, another thing to remark about this fish, it's about a third of the body is head, huge head.
19:58Look at this. This river is just full of predators. There's a big chunk of fin missing there.
20:04I get the fish back in the water so it can recover before I let it go.
20:09It just proves my point, what I was saying earlier on.
20:13You throw a bit of dead fish in this river and there's anything that could take it.
20:17You know, it could be an electric eel, that's what I was hoping for.
20:20But, you know, it could just as likely be one of these red-tailed catfish.
20:24That was a great catch, but unfortunately it's not the fish I'm after.
20:40I need to find out more about electric eels, anything about them which may help me catch one.
20:45I'm meeting up with a fish expert from the University of Pará, Dr Jonathan Reddy.
20:56He has a couple of specimens in a tank so I can get my first proper look at an electric eel.
21:04These fish are using their electric capability all the time. They're constantly sending out little pulses.
21:09Smaller eels like these deliver a less powerful shock than the larger ones, but they can still pack a punch.
21:20Wearing protective rubber gloves, Jonathan shows me this by hooking one up to a bank of LEDs.
21:26It lights them up using muscles that have been modified into thousands of special cells,
21:33which work in a similar way to AA batteries.
21:36Each individual cell generates around a tenth of a volt,
21:41but when they all fire together a large pulse is produced.
21:46It uses this high voltage to shock prey and for defence.
21:50So this voltage is just for a very short while, 400, 500 volts.
21:58The bigger eels then they're known to be up to 600 volts, maybe even above.
22:03That's almost the same as the voltage produced by a heart defibrillator.
22:08Electric eels also generate a low energy pulse of around 10 volts,
22:13which they use to survey their surroundings, helping to compensate for their poor eyesight.
22:17It can see even in muddy water by using its electro receptors to detect distortions in its electrical field.
22:26Her pulse is emitted every few seconds and these can be picked up by placing electrodes in the water and amplifying the signal.
22:35There you see, a wave of signals as they try and work out what's going on.
22:44So my finger in there wouldn't feel this, it's only...
22:47You wouldn't feel this.
22:49Small orienting pulses are harmless.
22:53But the bigger shocks are up to 65 times more powerful and can travel through water.
22:58When they're about to stun something, do you get much warning if they're going to do that?
23:02Do I hear a...?
23:03You will get some kind of warning, but it might not be too much for you to react in time.
23:08There you go. No problem.
23:12No shock this time.
23:22I'm hoping this equipment will help me locate them in the wild.
23:29Electric eels are proving to be very elusive.
23:33And large rivers have too many places to hide.
23:36A farmer called Milton knows the perfect place where electric eels could be trapped.
23:44I'm going to fish in a small lake which got cut off when the water levels dropped at the start of the dry season.
23:51It's three miles inland from the Araguaia, so he gives me and my boat a lift.
24:06Electric eels come up for air every 10 to 15 minutes.
24:13They get 80% of their oxygen by absorbing it through blood vessels in the mouth.
24:21If I pick up a signal and wait, I'll know I'm in the right position to spot one when it comes up to breathe.
24:26There was something just service made some rings just by that bit of wood there.
24:37It could have been electric eels coming up for air.
24:44I'm not hearing anything.
24:48I've swept the entire lake with no success.
24:51Well, this equipment worked very well in the tank, but it's not really picking up anything here that I can recognise as being definitely electric eels.
25:02So I think I'm going to return to doing what I know best, and that is getting a line in the water.
25:11Next to the lake is a small pond.
25:13Milton tells me it's full of a toothy fish called triera, which he says is good for bait.
25:22He gives me a bamboo rod to catch them as the locals do.
25:31Most fishing you're being quite stealthy.
25:33You're creeping up, you're putting the bait in the water quietly.
25:36Triera are very inquisitive.
25:37They lie in shallow water, and if they hear a sound, rather than head in the opposite direction, they actually come and investigate.
25:51That's the triera.
25:53Those teeth are probably almost as vicious as the piranhas.
25:56There's a bit gap-toothed, but those teeth are very sharp.
26:00That's the start towards getting some bait.
26:02Unlike electric eels, triera are proving incredibly easy to catch.
26:19They're also very slippery. It's like a bar of soap with teeth.
26:25Progress stops when my hook gets caught on an underwater branch.
26:28I'm not prepared for what I find at the end of my snag line.
26:33Oh, oh, oh, oh.
26:37What?
26:39In here.
26:49I'm on the hunt for an electric eel, my prime suspect for killing three cowboys.
26:53While fishing for bait and trying to free a snag line, I'm startled by what I find, because I may have just stumbled across one of these deadly creatures.
27:03Here.
27:05In here.
27:07In here.
27:12But it's a case of mistaken identity.
27:15That's actually not an electric eel, that is an eel.
27:18This is a musum.
27:20It may look like a true eel, but it is in fact another elongated fish.
27:25For a moment there, I was worried. I saw this long snake-like thing on the line.
27:30I wasn't hanging around to have a closer look. I was out of the water.
27:33If this was an electric eel this size, that could be potentially fatal.
27:40Strange sort of admission to me.
27:43I'm actually glad that wasn't the fish that I was after.
27:45I'm not having much luck catching an electric eel.
27:56It's proving far harder to find than I expected.
27:59But I've gotten word of another attack, and I'm heading out to investigate.
28:04It happened in 2007 on a farm near Villanova, where a 21-year-old farm worker called Francisco died in a small pond.
28:16I've travelled there to meet up with his friend Fernando, the only witness to Francisco's last moments.
28:21Francisco had only been working at the farm for two weeks, when he decided to go fishing in a nearby pond.
28:40Fernando warned him about the electric eels he'd seen there, but Francisco carried on anyway.
28:45They were fishing with a sort of basket. You go in the water, and you run this along the bottom of the pond,
28:55and then you see if you've got any fish in the basket.
29:03And he said, you know, they tried a couple of times, hadn't caught anything.
29:07Fernando was staying on the bank, he didn't want to get in the water.
29:10On the third scoop of the basket, Francisco disappeared.
29:18And so what he did, he ran for help, came back with two other people, and when they got there,
29:25there was no sign of anybody, no sign of Francisco.
29:28They started searching for his body by dragging a wooden hoe through the water.
29:33Eventually, Francisco's body rose to the surface, with a macabre addition.
29:46The body of the eel was wrapped around the boy's body.
29:53Only when it was pulled right into the shallows did it actually then disappear back into the water.
29:58Now, Fernando, like me, you know, he'd heard stories that this is a fish that's capable of killing people,
30:06but he didn't really believe that, hadn't heard anything very definite.
30:10And so when he saw what actually did happen, he said he almost didn't believe it.
30:21I've never heard of the situation of someone being killed by a fish in such a small volume of water.
30:25But the other thing that really struck me was that, unlike the case of the three cowboys who were killed,
30:36I mean, here there was absolutely no doubt what animal was responsible.
30:40There was a 100% positive ID, you know, this was an electric eel that killed Francisco.
30:44Finally, clear evidence of an electric eel causing a human death.
30:50What I don't know, though, is whether victims drown after being shocked or die from electrocution.
30:56I've tracked down Dr. Ivo Panovich, the pathologist who performed Francisco's autopsy.
31:06So I just asked Dr. Ivo Panovich a simple question.
31:19Is the electric eel capable of killing a human being?
31:23And the answer, a very clear, yes.
31:25He goes on to tell me exactly how Francisco died.
31:36It sounds like it was actually the heart was stopped.
31:40So instead of actually contracting strongly to circulate the blood,
31:45it had gone into some kind of fibrillation.
31:47In that kind of situation, you know, drowning is almost secondary.
31:54The immediate cause of the death was the electricity of the fish.
31:59This is exactly the evidence I've been searching for.
32:05There's only one thing left to do, catch the culprit,
32:09without ending up on Dr. Ivo's slam.
32:16While investigating the death of a 21-year-old,
32:27I've found conclusive proof that an electric eel can kill a person outright.
32:34Now I've got to catch one in the wild, without receiving a lethal shock.
32:39The locals tell me electric eels lurk here.
32:49I'm wearing my protective rubber boots,
32:51and the rubber gloves are on standby in case I catch one.
32:55I've just seen something surface.
32:58I've also ditched my carbon fibre rod in favour of a bamboo pole.
33:02Perfect for small ponds like this, and with the added advantage that it won't conduct electricity.
33:15That's triera. Oops!
33:17Once again, aggressive triera are proving no problem to catch.
33:20I actually thought that might have been an electric eel, because the take was not characteristic of a triera.
33:29A triera normally is a very sort of jagged, quick take.
33:31That was quite fiddly, and the line going out slowly,
33:33so I thought it might have been an electric eel, but another triera.
33:36I'm becoming increasingly frustrated.
33:44Because the final question still lingers.
33:48Is one eel capable of killing three men?
33:54Little is known about electric eel behaviour,
33:57so just seeing one in the wild, never mind catching one,
34:00might help me answer this last question.
34:06I know now that this is an animal that's capable of killing people,
34:08it's got nothing to fear from other animals,
34:11and at times it certainly seems to be pretty bold, but, you know, where are they?
34:17I think, you know, I've got to give this some real serious thought about what I do now,
34:23if I'm actually to succeed in catching one of these things.
34:31The electric eel's elusiveness isn't the only thing going against me.
34:34It was on a night like this when, according to Tupi legend,
34:46the ancestral electric eel received its heaven-sent powers,
34:50when a lightning bolt was dropped on it.
34:54But the rain that's falling for the first time in months
34:57is about to make my job much harder.
34:59Soon the eels will no longer be concentrated in the shallow, dry-season ponds.
35:11I was getting close, but with this, you know,
35:14it could mean that my window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
35:16It could actually be too late. This could ruin it. This could mean that I actually don't find my electric eel.
35:25The water is rising, and all the small ponds and waterways are starting to link up again,
35:41allowing the eels to disperse.
35:42This makes an already elusive creature nearly impossible to find.
35:49My best option is to travel east, to where the rains haven't yet hit.
35:55I fish as I go, but I'm still catching everything but an electric eel.
36:04This is a thing called a fidalgo, it's a type of catfish.
36:07Not an electric eel.
36:08My last hope is an area just south-west of Marabah, where it's still tinder-dry, and fires are burning everywhere.
36:21The water here is at its absolute lowest.
36:24And at daybreak, I'll have the best chance I'm going to get, before the rains sweep in.
36:29After asking around, I get a promising lead about a tiny pool right in the middle of cattle pasture.
36:44It's more like a mud puddle.
36:47The last place I'd expect to find a river monster.
36:50Finally, after ten days of searching, a giant electric eel is right in front of me.
37:06Does that look like just one of these branches, one of these roots?
37:10That is an electric eel, it's a big one.
37:12Now, I've got to work up the nerve to catch it.
37:20I've travelled the world, tracking downriver monsters in some of the most dangerous waters imaginable.
37:36But my journey to catch a deadly electric eel ends at a mud hole in the middle of cattle pasture.
37:43It's the last place on earth I'd expect to find an elusive, lethal fish.
37:48I'm just making a bit of a trench, from my point of view.
37:53It'll be easier to handle if there's some kind of sort of notch that it's in,
37:57rather than it's being able to slip and slide all over the place.
38:01My normal capture method would be useless in water this shallow.
38:05So out goes the rod, and in comes a lasso, fitting for cowboy country.
38:09Because electric eels don't rely on physical strength, pulling it out of the water shouldn't be that hard.
38:21But not getting shocked will be.
38:23So protective clothing is essential.
38:24We've got a plan.
38:27The plan is not so much to sort of go after the head with the noose,
38:31but to position that and then get it to go through the noose.
38:34Just taking a few deep breaths because one slip and, you know, it could be very nasty indeed.
38:42Need to be so focused and so careful about this.
38:44An eel this size can deliver a shock of 650 volts.
38:55That's enough to stop my heart in seconds.
38:57First go. Amazing. First go.
39:10Electric eels can keep on shocking out of water, but the rubber gloves we're wearing protect us from this.
39:17Look at the colours on this thing. I've got to give it a clean.
39:20That is like, it's doing a sort of, it looks like a muscle contraction, spasm almost.
39:27That's when it's actually shocking.
39:31Because electric eels get most of their oxygen from breathing air,
39:34they can stay out of water for long periods of time.
39:43That's five foot ten and a half. That's pretty much exactly the same as me.
39:50This is exactly the same size as the eel that killed Francisco,
39:54the 21-year-old man who died in a tiny pond near Villa Nova.
40:03If I wasn't wearing these rubber gloves, I could be dead too.
40:09It's over 100 degrees and I don't want the fish to overheat,
40:13so time it went back in the water.
40:14The pond may be shallow at the moment, but the rains are not far behind me.
40:25The waters will soon rise, giving this eel the freedom to roam once again.
40:30My search led me to this tiny drying out puddle.
40:35I mean, the water in there is barely six inches deep.
40:37It's the last place you'd expect to find a river monster.
40:40But that's where it was.
40:42There's more, there's more. There's more.
40:45There's not just this big one.
40:48Again, it looks like wood, but it started moving.
40:50We were watching it and it looks like there's actually several,
40:53but smaller, right in with these roots here.
41:00I've just never seen anything like this before.
41:03It's like a tangle of bodies.
41:05I'm just trying to count the heads.
41:07The more I look, the more I see.
41:09I was thinking ten or a dozen.
41:10I think there could be 20 down here.
41:11This is an incredible discovery and answers the final question about how the cowboys died.
41:22I believe a group of electric eels like this was trapped in a pool over the dry season.
41:30When the rains came, the water levels got higher,
41:33until the eels could all leave into the swelling waterways.
41:36It was in these waterways where the trio of unlucky cowboys came across them.
41:43After their startled horses threw them into the water.
41:47Each one of these eels could deliver a fatal shock.
41:52So a group of 20 would easily be capable of killing the cowboys.
41:57This journey has once again proved to me that there's no end to lethal river monsters.
42:08And that they can be found anywhere.
42:11Who knows where I'll find one next.
42:18Want to know how to catch a river monster of your own?
42:21I'll show you how at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.
42:24I'll show you how at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.
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