River Monsters (2009) s03e05 Episode Script

I'm Jeremy Wade, biologist and monster wrangler.
I've spent the last 25 years travelling the globe bringing in these giants.
There it is! Look at that for a fish.
Much of this time was in Brazil where I've caught many monsters before.
Red bellied piranha.
(Frenzied neighing) I'm back to investigate a new story about a triple homicide.
The people who fell in the water actually disappeared.
This is like no creature I've tackled before.
This thing is different, it has invisible powers.
Chasing this monster takes me into the heart of Brazil's rugged frontier, where people fear for my life.
He says it will kill you, no two ways about it.
And it leads to possibly the strangest monster catch of my career.
I've chased river monsters all over the world, but I've always considered Brazil my second home.
There's the fish! There's the fish.
This is where I've done most of my fishing Look at this! catching all manner of freshwater killers.
I've been drawn back by a chilling story about the death of a group of cowboys.
I've heard of a river monster taking an individual before (Screaming) but never three people at once.
This is a new killer for me.
My journey begins in Brazil's wild west.
Para State is cowboy country, and outsiders rarely visit.
But I'm on my way to meet an eyewitness to the cowboys' deaths.
I'm travelling by boat along the Tocantins River so I can start fishing immediately and see what killers are in this area.
During the wet season, this river is connected to the place where the cowboys died, so the monster could have escaped into these waters.
I don't know yet what could be down there so I have to be prepared for anything.
Just gonna use a short sea-fishing boat rod.
This is gear that would hold a fish of 100 pounds, but it would also pick up something that might be just one or two pounds.
So it's compromise fishing gear for just general purpose fishing.
I don't really know what I'm likely to encounter down there.
This is actually a fish I bought down the market this morning.
It's just a tasty, scaly fish.
I'm just gonna cut the tail off and use that, I think.
It's a big river, this, and so what you're not doing is casting at random because the fish won't be distributed at random.
But what we've got here, it's quite turbulent and it's also moving back on itself near the bank so it's the kind of place where food coming down the river would settle.
And that's going to cause the small fish to congregate and then right on up the food chain.
It's bumping the bottom.
It's not long before I get my first bite.
Oh I think something's nibbling that.
Yep.
That's a piranha.
It's a black piranha.
The black piranha is the largest of the piranha family growing up to a foot-and-a-half long.
A mouth full of razor-sharp teeth has given piranhas a fearsome reputation.
And it's well earned.
Two years ago, I found a story about a young boy who was devoured by piranhas in front of his grandparents.
(Speaks Portuguese) All they got in was bones.
It's unlikely that piranhas would have killed all three cowboys.
But I know from experience that you've got to keep an open mind, only eliminating a suspect after you've heard all the evidence, which is why I'm meeting a witness tomorrow.
Before I track him down, I'll see what other potential suspects are here.
It must be a predator's paradise down there.
Within minutes, something else has grabbed my bait.
This feels much bigger than a black piranha.
Gosh, this is strong! It's strong.
It's rising up in the water, there it is.
Oh, it's a ray! It's a ray! Size of that! This is the first spotted river ray I've ever caught.
I've come across stingrays before.
In Thailand, I've seen how they can seriously injure people.
(Screaming) I want to take a closer look but I'm not sure how to safely haul it into the boat.
My worry with this fish is getting too close to it.
(Speaks Portuguese) Its tail has a venomous spike, five inches long, which could whip round and stab me as I pull it in.
Taking it to shore and pulling it onto the bank is the best option.
On close inspection, I'm reminded that this can kill as well.
That spine, there, very dangerous.
It's just like a knife, five inches long.
That would go in your flesh very easily, be very painful.
If that's in the wrong part of your body, it could puncture an artery and be fatal.
And these, here.
Look at those.
They don't look very nice either.
Like piranha, this is an unlikely suspect for killing three people at the same time.
But I'll need to hear the witness's account before I can take it off the list.
I've arranged to meet him near where the deaths occurred, just outside the small town of El Dorado.
For the last leg of my journey, I leave the boat behind and drive cross-country.
I'm comfortable in the Brazilian rainforest but this area is unfamiliar to me and I'm not sure what to expect.
The whole area was cleared decades ago by ranchers and gold prospectors.
All the wild animals were chased out or killed, making it safe for livestock and humans.
But it seems that a deadly water predator has managed to cling on.
The cowboys' deaths are still raw in the minds of many and I've been refused access to where they died.
I meet the witness, Hezunaldo, at a nearby farm instead.
He tells me that it happened during the wet season when the pastures were flooded.
A mule had become stuck in the water.
Hezunaldo and five other cowboys tried to rescue it.
What they had to do was actually, sort of, go in and just try and pull the animal out.
The first three cowboys went into the water, Hezunaldo and the others hung back.
As the first horses got up to their bellies, something startled them.
All three cowboys were thrown into the water.
The others immediately got out before it was too late.
(Speaks Portuguese) I just asked why he didn't just jump straight in to try and help them and he said, "Something told me there was something in the water, it wasn't safe.
Didn't want to be number four, the fourth victim.
" People who fell in the water actually disappeared and we're talking water that sounds like three or four feet deep.
I asked him what that leaves him feeling like - this was six years ago and he said, it's left this sort of lingering sadness from having lost his colleagues.
Hezunaldo's story helps me eliminate some potential suspects.
Piranhas can definitely be taken off the list.
When piranhas attack, it's an unmistakable feeding frenzy, with the water looking as though it's boiling.
But Hezunaldo saw only a calm surface.
Also from Hezunaldo's account, stingrays can be struck off the list.
If the cowboys had been fatally stabbed by rays there would have been huge amounts of blood in the water which he didn't see.
Hezunaldo has his own theory about the killer's identity.
He's given me the name of a terrifying new suspect for the cowboy killer, a creature I've heard about, but never encountered.
The electric eel.
He says although he didn't actually see anything, he is pretty certain that this was electric eels that caused these three men to die.
I have a prime suspect, a monster said to have mythical powers.
And one I always feared I might encounter.
Now I have to try to catch one.
Known locally as poraque, the electric eel isn't actually an eel at all.
It's a member of the knifefish family.
They can be found throughout the Amazon and Orinoco river basins.
They can grow to over eight feet long and deliver a charge that's enough to light up a house.
But is this enough to shock a human being to death? I've heard stories about electric eels killing people before but they've never been proven.
I've also heard of murderers blaming electric eels to cover their misdeeds.
But could an eel really kill three people at one time? I have my doubts.
There are many other animals in these waters that are documented killers, such as anacondas and caimans.
Victims of these predators bear the tell-tale marks of bites or strangulation, clues that help identify the culprit.
A victim of electrocution would have no such marks.
My job now is to find out what state the cowboys' corpses were in when they were recovered.
To do this, Hezunaldo has put me in contact with a man called Hermes.
He discovered the bodies the next day.
He tells me that the grim search for the three bodies started where the cowboys disappeared.
(Speaks Portuguese) They actually got boats with motors in the water and they were driving those around to create a disturbance.
The wash from the propellers would churn up anything lying below the surface.
There were no bite marks or anything like that on the bodies.
Having no bites is in line with the prime suspect being an electric eel.
And Hermes has one final revelation about the recovered bodies.
All three had their hands clenched and inside their hands were weed or grass from the bottom of the water.
Clenched hands are a tell-tale clue.
When a person receives a large electric shock, the body's muscles began to spasm which could explain why the cowboys died with their hands clenched.
This is all strong evidence that an electric eel might be responsible for the cowboys' deaths.
But I wonder how much real proof I'm going to find.
I've got to catch one and see for myself what these fish are capable of.
Normally, I can see what I'm up against: Massive teeth, cavernous mouths and tails that can fatally stab you.
The electric eel's invisible powers make it unlike any fish I've gone after before.
I'm hoping to gain some local knowledge at the town's fish market.
The people here are those most likely to have come up against them.
Everywhere I look are toothy, dangerous fish.
But electric eels aren't on the menu.
(Speaks Portuguese) Fishermen don't fish for them and the reason why is that they say the shock is very powerful.
And when I ask, "How would I fish for one?" He said, "Actually, I don't know.
Nobody" You know, this thing gives a shock that can kill you.
Nobody fishes for it.
Nobody actually Well, he can't tell me how I'd go about that.
He said the actual shock, the severity of it is like putting your fingers into a power socket in your house.
In fact, he says he would rather put his fingers in the power socket than touch one of these fish.
Electric eels, or poraque, have been striking fear into people's hearts since long before Europeans arrived in the 16th century.
Before electricity was understood, Brazil's indigenous Tupi people told of a warrior who carelessly dropped a lightning bolt on an eel, giving the fish its mysterious power.
In reality, it's the eel's specially-adapted muscles that generate the large shocks.
But does this electricity kill somebody outright? Or do they drown after being paralysed? - Poraque? - Poraque! When I tell people about my mission to catch one, they're in no doubt about what will happen to me, one way or the other.
He says it'll kill you, no two ways about it.
- Poraque? - No? Don't mess with it, basically.
I said, "Is it strong enough to kill?" He said, "Absolutely.
No doubt.
" It's looking like it could be a bit of a mission.
I would normally try to apprehend my suspect at the scene of the crime, but quite apart from the ranch owner's sensitivities, I'm here at the height of the dry season.
The water levels have dropped and the spot where the cowboys died is now just pasture.
All the fish are now concentrated in the remaining water, in theory making them easier to find.
It's possible that the monster could have moved into the nearest big river: The Araguaia.
One thing is playing on my mind.
Since nobody fishes for electric eels, I haven't been able to get any advice on how to catch them.
I've been warned they're elusive and tend to show up when least expected.
One of the few accounts I've come across of electric eels being caught is from the 19th century, when explorer Alexander Van Humboldt wanted one for some experiments.
His method was to force some horses into a lake that was infested with them.
He assumed they would use up all their electricity shocking the horses leaving him free to pick them up afterwards without getting harmed.
After two minutes, two horses were already dead.
When Humboldt thought the eels had discharged all their electricity, he waded in to pick one up.
At that point, he didn't know that they're capable of shocking for over an hour.
And he received a very nasty jolt.
All I can realistically do is put a bait in the water and hope an electric eel takes it before something else does.
The thing is, there's loads of predators in these waters so I've got a bait on the bottom here but there's lots of other species that could pick it up.
There's no way really to single out the electric eel.
I know I'm doing the right thing to catch one but something else could beat it to the bait.
Because I don't want to get a nasty shock when I catch an electric eel, I'm taking some precautions.
The nylon line I'm using won't conduct electricity so I'll be safe when bringing it in.
Then, once I get it to the boat, I have a thick pair of rubber boots and gloves, which means I'll be able to handle it without getting shocked.
We've attracted a pod of Amazon river dolphins.
You might think that they're gonna take a nice tasty dead fish but actually, they have this echo location ability, which is a bit like X-ray vision, and they know that there's a hook there and they won't take it.
But there's something big down there that hasn't sensed the hook.
Good size fish, good size fish! Is this the electric eel I've been looking for? Whatever it is, it's putting up a powerful fight.
I don't think this is an electric eel.
It's too strong.
The back four fifths of an electric eel's body is mostly used to produce electricity.
It doesn't have the muscle to put up a struggle like this.
Oh, yeah.
You can see the bubbles coming up.
It's a big redtail catfish.
Big redtail catfish.
Out of the water it gulps in air, blowing it out through its gill flaps.
Got it.
Got it, got it, got it.
This is what they call a pirarara here, which is well, in English, we call it a redtail catfish for a very, very obvious reason.
Just the wonderful colouration it's got as well, dark back, this very clear line between the dark and the light.
This mottling of brown spots as well.
A very strong fish, but it tends to not have the stamina but another thing to remark about this fish, a third of the body is head, huge head.
Very capacious mouth, it's got loads of small teeth so that's just for gripping.
If it gets a fish that it can't totally inhale all at once - Whoops! With the muscular jaw and those teeth, it's not going to get away.
Look at this.
This river is full of predators.
There's a big chunk of fin missing, there.
I get the fish back in the water so it can recover before I let it go.
This proves my point, what I was saying earlier on.
You throw a bit of dead fish in this river and there's anything that could take it.
Could be an electric eel, that's what I was hoping for.
But, you know, it could just as likely be one of these, redtail catfish.
That was a great catch but unfortunately, it's not the fish I'm after.
I need to find out more about electric eels anything about them which may help me catch one.
I'm meeting up with a fish expert from the University of Para, Doctor Jonathan Reddy.
He has a couple of specimens in a tank, so I can get my first proper look at an electric eel.
These fish are using their electric capability all the time.
They're constantly sending out little pulses.
Smaller eels like these deliver a less powerful shock than the larger ones, but they can still pack a punch.
Wearing protective rubber gloves, Jonathan shows me this by hooking one up to a bank of LEDs.
It lights them up using muscles that have been modified into thousands of special cells which work in a similar way to AA batteries.
Each individual cell generates around a tenth of a volt, but when they all fire together, a large pulse is produced.
It uses this high voltage to shock prey and for defence.
So this voltage is, just for a very short while, 400/500 volts.
The bigger eels, they're known to be up to 600 volts, maybe even above.
That's almost the same as the voltage produced by a heart defibrillator.
Electric eels also generate a low energy pulse of around ten volts, which they use to survey their surroundings, helping to compensate for their poor eyesight.
It can see, even in muddy water, by using its electro-receptors to detect distortions in its electrical field.
A pulse is emitted every few seconds, and these can be picked up by placing electrodes in the water and amplifying the signal.
(Clicking) There, you see? A wave of signals as they try and work out what's going on.
- So my finger in there wouldn't feel this? - You wouldn't feel this.
Small orientating pulses are harmless.
But the bigger shocks are up to 65 times more powerful and can travel through water.
When they're about to stun something, do you get much warning if they're gonna do that? Do I hear a You will get some kind of warning but it might not be too much for you to react in time.
- (Clicking continues) - There you go.
No problems.
No shock this time.
I'm hoping this equipment will help me locate them in the wild.
Electric eels are proving to be very elusive and rivers have too many places to hide.
So I'm changing my tactics.
This river goes up and down a lot during the course of a year.
I'm actually here right at the bottom of the dry season and in fact, on the rocks, it's possible to see the high water mark, which is about 10 or 15 feet up on what it is now.
But what this means is that at this time of the year, a lot of bits of water in the floodplain which are normally connected to the river become isolated and separated.
So we've got separate lakes and people have been saying, actually, rather than the river, that's where you should be looking.
The trouble is getting in there.
Normally, you'd take your boat in but in the dry season, we're gonna have to find a way to drag the boat to the water.
A farmer called Milton gives me and my boat a lift.
He knows the perfect place where eels could be trapped.
It's three miles inland from the Araguaia.
Electric eels come up for air every 10 to 15 minutes.
They get 80% of their oxygen by absorbing it through blood vessels in the mouth.
If I pick up a signal and wait, I'll know I'm in the right position to spot one when it comes up to breathe.
There was something just surfaced, made some rings by that wood, there.
It could have been an electric eel coming up for air.
I'm not hearing anything.
I've swept the entire lake with no success.
Well, this equipment worked very well in the tank but er, it's not really picking up anything here that I can recognise as definitely being an electric eel so I'm going to return to doing what I know best and that is getting a line in the water.
Next to the lake is a small pond.
Milton tells me it's full of a toothy fish called triera, which he says is good for bait.
He gives me a bamboo rod to catch them as the locals do.
Most fishing, you're being quite stealthy, you're creeping up, you're putting the bait in the water quietly.
Triera are very inquisitive.
They lie in shallow water.
And if they hear a sound, rather than heading in the opposite direction, they actually come and investigate.
It's a triera.
Those teeth are probably almost as vicious as a piranha's.
It's a bit gap-toothed but those teeth are very sharp.
That's a start towards getting some bait.
Unlike electric eels, triera are proving incredibly easy to catch.
They're also very slippery.
It's like a bar of soap with teeth.
Oh! Progress stops when my hook gets caught on an underwater branch.
I'm not prepared for what I find at the end of my snagged line.
I leap out of the water because I think I've just stumbled across one of these deadly creatures.
But it's a case of mistaken identity.
It's actually not an electric eel.
That is an eel.
This is a masoom.
It may look like a true eel but it is in fact another elongated fish.
For a moment there, I was worried.
I saw this long snake-like thing on the line and I wasn't hanging around to have a closer look.
I was out of the water.
If this was an electric eel, this size, that could be potentially fatal.
Strange sort of admission to make.
I'm actually glad that wasn't the fish I was after.
I'm not having much luck catching an electric eel.
It's proving far harder to find than I expected.
But I've gotten word of another attack and I'm heading out to investigate.
It happened in 2007 on a farm near Vila Nova, where a 21-year-old farm worker called Francisco died in a small pond.
I've travelled there to meet up with his friend, Fernando, the only witness to Francisco's last moments.
(Speaks Portuguese) Francisco had only been working at the farm for two weeks when he decided to go fishing in a nearby pond.
Fernando warned him about the electric eels he'd seen there but Francisco carried on anyway.
They were fishing with a sort of basket.
You go in the water and you run this along the bottom of the pond and then you see if you've got any fish in the basket.
He said they tried a couple of times, hadn't caught anything, Fernando was staying on the bank, he didn't want to get in the water.
On the third scoop of the basket Francisco disappeared.
So what he did is he ran for help, came back with two other people, and when they got there, there was no sign of anybody.
No sign of Francisco.
They started searching for his body by dragging a wooden hoe through the water.
(Speaks Portuguese) Eventually, Francisco's body rose to the surface with a macabre addition.
The body of the eel was wrapped round the boy's body.
Only when it was pulled right into the shallows did it actually then disappear back into the water.
Fernando's saying that like me, he'd heard stories that this fish is capable of killing people, didn't really believe that, hadn't heard anything very definite.
So when he saw what actually did happen, he almost didn't believe it.
Never heard of a situation of someone being killed by a fish in such a small volume of water.
But the other thing that really struck me was that unlike the case of the three cowboys who were killed, here there was absolutely no doubt what animal was responsible.
There was 100% positive ID.
This was an electric eel that killed Francisco.
Finally, clear evidence of an electric eel causing a human death.
What I don't know is whether victims drown after being shocked or die from electrocution.
I've tracked down Doctor Ivor Panavich, the pathologist who performed Francisco's autopsy.
(Speaks Portuguese) I just asked Doctor Panavich a simple question, is the electric eel capable of killing a human being? And the answer is a very clear "yes".
He goes on to tell me exactly how Francisco died.
It sounds actually like the heart was stopped.
Instead of actually contracting er, strongly to circulate the blood, it had gone into some kind of fibrillation.
In that kind of situation, drowning is almost secondary.
The immediate cause of the death was the electricity of the fish.
This is exactly the evidence I've been searching for: That electric eels can kill a person outright.
Now there's only one thing left to do: Catch the culprit without ending up on Doctor Ivor's slab.
The locals tell me electric eels lurk here.
I'm wearing my protective rubber boots and the rubber gloves are on standby, in case I catch one.
Just seen something surface.
I've also ditched my carbon-fibre rod, in favour of a bamboo pole.
Perfect for small ponds like this and with the added advantage that it won't conduct electricity.
It's actually a very spooky place to fish and just putting the finishing touch on that is that sound in the background.
If you didn't know what that was, I think you might well just pack up and go home.
In fact, it's howler monkeys.
Very weird, frightening sound.
This triera Whoops! Once again, aggressive triera are proving no problem to catch.
Actually thought that might have been an electric eel because the take was not characteristic of triera.
Triera are normally a very jagged, quick take.
That was quite fiddly and the line going out slowly so I thought that might have been an electric eel but another triera.
I'm becoming increasingly frustrated.
Because the final question still lingers.
Is one eel capable of killing three men? Little is known about electric eel behaviour so just seeing one in the wild, never mind catching one, might help me answer this last question.
I know now that this is an animal that's capable of killing people, it's got nothing to fear from other animals.
And at times, it certainly seems to be pretty bold but where are they? I think, you know, I've got to give this some real serious thought, about what I do now if I'm actually to succeed in catching one of these things.
The electric eel's elusiveness isn't the only thing going against me.
It was on a night like this when, according to Tupi legend, the ancestral electric eel received its heaven-sent powers when a lightning bolt was dropped on it.
But the rain that's falling for the first time in months is about to make my job much harder.
Soon the eels will no longer be concentrated in the shallow dry season ponds.
(Clap of thunder) I was getting close, but with this, it could mean that my window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
It could actually be too late, this could ruin it.
This could mean I don't find my electric eel.
The water is rising and all the small ponds and waterways are starting to link up again, allowing the eels to disperse.
This makes an already elusive creature nearly impossible to find.
My best option is to travel east to where the rains haven't yet hit.
I head for a village where I've heard a story about a young boy dying in the same way as Francisco meaning there must be electric eels there.
On arriving, I find out that a dog was shocked just an hour ago in a nearby pond.
This could be my chance to see an electric eel in the wild.
Ah! There's one here! I'm too late.
People from the village have killed it.
I mean, it's never nice to see an animal that's been killed.
This one's got a machete cut halfway through its body.
It's amazing that such a small volume of water could harbour a lethal electric eel six feet long.
So the dog was shocked somewhere down the far end and apparently, it was sort of struggling, swimming up towards this end and there was a lad here who was able to pull it out of the water.
Then went and got help and basically, they wanted this thing out of here.
Although it's a bit disturbing, you can understand why they wanna do this.
This animal can kill you so best to take no chances and kill it before it kills you.
Ah, sorry, they're just saying there's another one in there.
In fact, I thought I saw other ripples myself of a big animal.
They want to make sure this water is empty of electric eels.
So they start to drain the pond by hand.
It's interesting, a lot of the places where I go where people live next to dangerous fish, they have sort of an attitude of co-existence.
They don't have the idea that they've got to kill them all.
This is an animal they are very afraid of and they just don't want them here.
If there's any chance of getting rid of them, they will do what they can to get rid of them.
As the water level gets lower, the tension starts to rise.
The eel is now in only a few inches of water.
But it's still proving elusive.
I'd been hearing that you can get very large animals living in small amounts of water and this is a very small bit of water.
So although this time, I was too late, I think this is the kind of place possibly where I'm gonna find an eel for myself, still alive.
They're so desperate to get rid of it that they risk getting electrocuted themselves.
He thinks there's actually one down here.
He got a bit of a shock poking the machete down into this hole.
When the electric eel finally reveals itself it's killed without any hesitation.
This time, it's only four foot long.
It's no surprise that I've had such a hard time finding an electric eel.
It's taken 20 people a couple of hours to find just one in here.
I travel further east, ahead of the rains.
I fish as I go.
But I'm still catching everything but an electric eel.
This is a thing called a fidalgo, it's a type of catfish.
You're not an electric eel My last hope is an area just south-west of Maraba where it's still tinder dry and fires are burning everywhere.
The water here is at its absolute lowest.
And at daybreak, I'll have the best chance I'm going to get before the rains sweep in.
After asking around, I get a promising lead about a tiny pool right in the middle of cattle pasture.
It's more like a mud puddle, the last place I'd expect to find a river monster.
Finally, after ten days of searching, a giant electric eel is right in front of me.
That just looked like one of these branches or one of these roots.
That is an electric eel, it's a big one.
Now I've got to work up the nerve to catch it.
I'm just making a bit of a trench.
From my point of view, it'll be easier to handle if there's some sort of notch that it's in, rather than it being able to slip and slide all over the place.
My normal capture method would be useless in water this shallow, so out goes the rod and in comes the lasso, fitting for cowboy country.
Because electric eels don't rely on physical strength, pulling it out of the water shouldn't be that hard, but not getting shocked will be, so protective clothing is essential.
We've got a plan.
The plan is not so much to go after the head with the noose, but to position that, and get it to go through the noose.
Just taking a few deep breaths because one slip and it could be very nasty indeed.
I need to be so focused and so careful about this.
An eel this size can deliver a shock of 650 volts.
That's enough to stop my heart in seconds.
First go, amazing! First go.
Electric eels can keep on shocking out of water but the rubber gloves we're wearing protect us from this.
Look at the colours on this thing.
I'm going to give it a clean.
That is it's doing what looks like a muscle contraction.
A spasm almost, and that's when it's actually shocking.
Because electric eels get most of their oxygen from breathing air, they can stay out of water for long periods of time.
That's five foot ten-and-a-half.
That's pretty much exactly the same as me.
This is exactly the same size as the eel that killed Francisco, the 21-year-old man who died in the tiny pond near Vila Nova.
If I wasn't wearing these rubber gloves, I could be dead too.
It's over 100 degrees and I don't want the fish to overheat so time it went back in the water.
The pond may be shallow at the moment but the rains are not far behind me.
The waters will soon rise, giving this eel the freedom to roam once again.
My search led me to this tiny drying-out puddle, I mean, the water in there is barely six inches deep.
The last place you'd expect to find a river monster.
- But that's where it was.
- (Speaks Portuguese) There's more, there's more There's not just this big one.
Again, it looked like wood but it started moving.
Watching it it looks like there's actually several.
They're smaller, but right in with these roots here.
I've just never seen anything like this before.
It's like a tangle of bodies.
I'm just trying to count the heads.
The more I look, the more I see.
I was thinking ten or a dozen, but there could be 20 down here.
This is an incredible discovery and answers the final question about how the cowboys died.
I believe a group of electric eels like this was trapped in a pool over the dry season.
When the rains came, the water levels got higher until the eels could all leave into the swelling waterways.
It was in these waterways where the trio of unlucky cowboys came across them after their startled horses threw them into the water.
Each one of these eels could deliver a fatal shock.
So a group of 20 would easily be capable of killing the cowboys.
This journey has once again proved to me that there's no end to lethal river monsters and that they can be found anywhere.
Who knows where I'll find one next?