[jbri]

The electric eel has lots of insulating fat just under the skin - so it wouldn't be too much outside the realms of plausibility for it to have higher electrical resistance than something made primarily of muscle.

Of course, the insulating fat also likely provides a sort of faraday cage effect - any current that does hit the eel will just flow through its skin instead of hitting anything important.

[adwf]

Yep, I was going with Faraday cage. If the special electrical cells that an eel has on its skin are conducting, then surely there is some form of cage effect happening.

Having just done a very very quick search of relevant papers, I'm not entirely sure that anyone has actually looked into this. So the scientific answer would best be "I dunno".

[hcarvalhoalves]

Now, that explains better.

[a8da6b0c91d]

Why does fat have more electrical resistance than muscle?

[ridgeguy]

Fat is a dielectric (electrical insulator). Fatty tissues contain a higher volume fraction of dielectric (fat) than do muscles, nerves, etc., which are mostly full of aqueous electrolyte solutions (Na+, K,+, Ca++) which are good electrical conductors.

[thristian]

Muscle needs to be a conductor because that's how the 'tense' message is signalled—witness Luigi Galvani and his experiments on frogs' legs: apply a current, watch the leg spasm.