The electric eel is one of the many creatures Charles Darwin sliced up and examined in his years aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. When he cut it open, he found that 80 percent of the fish's body was taken up by three organs made of what looked like muscle tissue, but not quite. This is where the animal makes electricity.
After finding similar organs in other fish, Darwin correctly deduced that the lineages came to the same adaptive conclusion independent of one another. Until now, though, no one has known how similar they were. According to a paper published today in Science, at least three of the six lineages evolved their electric organs through the same genetic pathways.
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