this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Electricity was discovered by the first guy looking at a thunderstorm, so they were called "thunder fish".

The word "electricity" was invented to describe the property of attracting straws after rubbing some wool on an "electron", which was associated with "sunbeam" and was the Greek word for amber (which in turn got its name after people conflated the ambergris or "gray amber" derived from sperm whales, with the fossilized tree resin or "yellow amber"... and the whales got their name from whale oil or "spermaceti"... which yes, people thought was whale semen that just happened to burn great in candles).

PS: blow the candle and sweet dreams... ๐ŸŒฌ๏ธ๐Ÿ•ฏ๏ธ

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Actual serious answer: electric eels are exclusively South American, so the indigenous peoples there probably do have their own names for them which would likely pre-date the discovery of electricity.

(Electric fish known to other cultures would have been electric catfish, not electric eels.)

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

According to this, in ancient Egypt they were called the thunder of the Nile, or the angry catfish! haha

https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/education/electricity-usage-ancient-civilizations

๐Ÿ’ข๐ŸŸ

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

spicy noodles

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

"Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile"'

-wikipedia electricity

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This, more that likely. Lightning has been around long before man poked out of his cave. And we know that back in the days of Vikings, pretty much anything that slithered was deemed a serpent.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

But lightning is this huge deathray from the gods. The fish are just very tingly and ouchy and makes you twitch.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It's not a twitch, if I recall correctly- you get fully paralyzed and dragged under water

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

From what I hear, Electric Eels does more than just tingly and ouchy stuff.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

zappy slithers

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Ouchie fishy