discharge

Studying the anatomy of the electric eel informed Alessandro Volta’s first synthetic battery and over two centuries later, the creature (Electophorus electricus, and technically a kind of knifefish) is still contributing to scientific innovation, as The Atlantic reports (not pictured but drawing off the same idea of scalability), with a Swiss team making soft and pliable energy storage units that act like the highly specialised electricity producing organ. Potentially compatible with our own bodies, some recognise the bionic potential, powering and self-sustaining medical implants and microscopic machinery that our metabolism and internal chemistry can keep charged.