OLL LEWIS: A Tale of Two Fishies

As most of you are probably aware we have a few eels at the CFZ, which we saved from being eaten by Cockneys. As the eels were not in the best of states when we got them it was sadly inevitable that despite our best efforts there would be some of the party that just didn’t make it. In all honesty they arrived in such a bad state, with some eels having chunks of skin missing and fungal infections, I was rather worried about their chances. However, thankfully two of the fellows have survived and would seem to be here to stay. The two eels couldn’t be more different, though.

A few months ago we had three eels, which had been getting along very happily together in their large tank in the office since last year: Eel-i Jenkins, Dan-eel Defoe and Ben Eel-ton (I bet you can’t guess who named them). When I came downstairs to feed and check on the animals, though, I noticed that Ben had been attacked. On inspection I saw that a chunk had been bitten out of his mid-section, removing the skin. Needless to say the prognosis did not look good and I removed him to another tank that I had set up for his recovery. As one of the two smaller eels in the tank, the other being Dan-eel, I had my suspicions that he had been attacked by Eel-i who was much larger than the other two in girth. I watched the tank and didn’t have to wait long for my suspicions to be confirmed, when Eel-i started trying to nip at Dan-eel. Needless to say I moved Dan-eel to another tank as well.

It looked for a while that Ben Eel-ton might survive against the odds and his wounds even started to heal before he eventually died about a fortnight after his ordeal, but the pre-emptive action has saved Dan-eel Defoe from a similar fate.

Since his separation from the other eels, Eel-i Jenkins has grown much larger and has a girth of perhaps three times that of Dan-eel. He struts around his tank confidently (or rather engages in the eel equivalent of strutting) and will eat anything. Although I have never tried him on anything more adventurous than meat, earthworms and fish pellets (and never will), I’m fairly sure that if something fell into his tank and he could get his jaws around it, he’d probably have a go at eating it within half an hour or so. Dan-eel, however, has hardly grown at all, remains rather thin and is a very fussy and picky eater. Dan-eel will eat nothing but earthworms and even then will approach them with caution, eat one or two and leave the rest. He is a lot more confident then he was when he was housed with Eel-i and stretches out around his tank more than he used to, which shows that he is aware that there are no competing eels around, but he seems to just eat the bare minimum he needs to survive out of fear that a bigger eel might turn up and demand the lion's share. Hopefully with time he will realise that this is not going to happen and start eating more and bulk up like Eel-i has.

Another reason for the differences between the two eels might be age: they were all the same size when we got them, but that does not necessarily mean they were the same age. Eel-i may well be a year or two older than Dan-eel and maybe getting ready to go off to spawn. Indeed, after finding Eel-i happily slithering around on the office floor about a fortnight ago I had to make a much more secure lid for his tank and change his lighting system to accommodate the new lid. From his general colouration, however, Eel-i is certainly not a silver eel yet, so could grow much larger. It is even possible that Eel-i could be a eunuch eel, which if so would give us a unique opportunity to observe the growth and size of a creature that could be responsible for a large number of lake monster sightings, including those of the Loch Ness monster. Even if Eel-i is just a regular eel it is fascinating to see how remarkably different Eel-i and Dan-eel are both physically and psychologically and to see just how much of the differences are due to environmental factors.