Sustainababble

If we said "name the weirdest, most mystical & inexplicable creature on earth" you would rightly say "80s English footballer Peter Beardsley". But pause for a moment to consider instead the 'umble eel, a fish(ish) so unknown and unknowable that no human has observed one shagging in the wild. In fact no-one's totally sure that they even DO shag in the wild. A bit like Peter Beardsley. It's an astonishing tale, the eel's, at the heart of which is a simple question that's confounded thinkers big and small for centuries: where do eels come from? Mad cap attempts to find out have been almost as wild as the fact that people like eating the poor sods in a 'jelly' of their own skin and sweat. We delve into the deliciously, reassuringly bonkers story of the eel and its origins, a story that in October 2022 partially revealed itself to modern science. Which doesn't strike us as a necessarily good thing. Enjoy Dr Emily Finch's twitter thread that prompted this episode, and then read Brooke Jarvis' superlative N