Zooillogix

Just when we thought that Dirty Jerse had hit rock bottom, its rivers and forests have become overrun with a slimy, invasive species of eel that can live for months during droughts and change sex if necessary in order to keep reproducing. The Asian swamp eels were found recently in Silver Lake (which is located approximately here in the Eastern U.S.).

i-88dc06b68f19fbadcd6821af501ef604-Asian Swamp Eel.jpg
Hey, fuggetaboutit!

The swamp eels eat just about anything that moves including invertebrates, fish, reptiles and amphibians and have no known predators, which may pose a disasterous threat to the New Jersey’s native ecosystem. They are also highly adaptable, able to live through droughts by burrowing under the ground for weeks and somehow surviving Jersey’s icy winters, something they do not face in Asia.

Most likely the swamp eels were accidentally let loose by a keeper of exotic aquariums, and can now be found not only in New Jersey but four other states as well, including Florida. New Jersey is starting an eradication program to locate and dispose of the invasive species. It’s a good thing the eels don’t eat engine oil and wife beater sweat or they would most likely have spread even faster, possibly growing to the size of small automobiles.

Comments

#1 milkshake
September 24, 2008

I don’t know if they are good to eat from the Jersey waters – but perhaps they could be used as living dildos
#2 vanderleun
September 24, 2008

Combined with your handle, milkshake, that has to be the most gay comment ever made on this page.
#3 Jim Thomerson
September 24, 2008

Your picture is not a swamp eel. I looked for a good picture but didn’t find one right off. Swamp eels don’t have pectoral fins. The family is Synbranchidae. The one in New Jersey is probably a Monopterus species, of which there are several established around in the Southern US.
#4 Gary
September 24, 2008

How do they taste? If they’re anything like the ones in sushi, their predator-free status won’t last long.
#5 Romeo Vitelli
September 24, 2008

“How do they taste?”

Only the transsexuals from Transylvania taste sweet.
#6 oryx
September 24, 2008

I think the animal in the photo is an electric eel– which is a fish, not an eel. Rather like an article on rats with a picture of a peccary.
#7 Hogan
September 25, 2008

oryx – eels are fish.
#8 Jim Thomerson
September 25, 2008

If something is called an eel,that means it looks like an eel, but tells us nothing about its relationship. The eel body form is found scattered all around among various groups of modern bony fishes. True eels are those, for example, Anguilla, with a leptocephalus larvae.

I see that swamp eels are regarded as a delicacy among knowledgable gourmets.
#9 Jim Thomerson
September 25, 2008

The swamp eel I am most familar with is Ophisternon aenigmaticum, the obscure swamp eel, which we collected at a dozen different localities in Belize. At one locality, we were collecting at night with headlights. It was at a road crossing with a bridge, and there was rip-rap rock laid around the bridge foundation. There was a swamp eel in the rip-rap, with about half its body out in the current. There were schools of Astyanax, about 1.5 in long. I watched the eel grab a couple of the Astyanax. I thought it was pretty efficient in its fishing.
#10 oryx
September 25, 2008

Hogan- quite right. I had misinterpreted this sentence from Wikipedia’s electric eel entry “Despite its name it is not an eel at all but rather a knifefish.”
#11 milkshake
September 25, 2008

you got problem with dat, Vanderleun dude? I was merely suggesting that them eels good in places your gerbil cannot reach.
#12 cabbagepow
September 26, 2008

Very interesting fishing. Thanks it is the sharing pictures…
#13 Fox1
October 6, 2008

Looks similar to an Amphiuma, which, while also referred to as an eel (“ditch eel,” “congo” or “conger eel”… southerners shouldn’t be allowed to name things) is actually a salamander
#14 film izle
August 10, 2010

It was at a road crossing with a bridge, and there was rip-rap rock laid around the bridge foundation.I see that swamp eels are regarded as a delicacy among knowledgable gourmets.

There was a swamp eel in the rip-rap, with about half its body out in the current. There were schools of Astyanax, about 1.5 in long. I watched the eel grab a couple of the Astyanax. I thought it was pretty efficient in its fishing.
#15 HattieFlynn
June 9, 2012

People in all countries take the personal loans from different creditors, because this is comfortable and fast.
#16 Stevie Mapes
July 2, 2012

I’ve an appointment tomorrow and im super nervous, Im just wondering what we have to do and how it will go…
I hope for that greatest!