Electrophorus electricus, or to give it is none Latin name, the Electric Eel, is one of those things that keeps cropping up in pulp fiction’s. It’s what the hard up bond villain type puts in his shark tank, if he can’t afford sharks and doesn’t want to fork out the cost of piranha food.

Shark tanks, clearly the classy choice are of course ridiculous, as most sharks do not attack humans anyway, you need a very big pool and just keeping the tank correctly chlorinated would be a challenge. Frankly you need a whole aquarium rather than a tank.

If, as is likely, a shark tank aquarium with suitably vicious sharks is not possible, then of course a tank of Piranha’s is a perfectly good mid-budget choice your for average villains lair. Except of course, most breeds of piranha actually prefer to eat fruit. In fact all but one species of piranha are entirely harmless scavengers. Even if you do get the right kind of piranha (if your interested its the red bellied piranha) they still seldom actually attack large animals or go into a feeding frenzy. You’d have to keep them nigh on starved most of the time and just hope the hero doesn’t turn up within twenty four hours of the last feeding time…

So, what does an evil melomaniac intent on world domination chose for his principal defense against the interfering hero? Well a tank of electric eels would seem perfect, would it not. No tricky moral issues about keeping them on the edge of starvation just so they will dispense with the hero. Just a big tank beneath a fall away floor with a fry of electric eels and your all good. (that’s the right collective noun btw, though a bed of eels or a swarm is equally acceptable, a fry just sounds right for a collection of electric eels don’t you think).

Also,, side note, the collective pro-noun for a group of Emu’s is ‘a mob’. To any one old enough to remember Rod Hull this will sound correct… But back to electric eels.

There is however one slight problem with stocking for hero inhuming tank with electric eels. The first of which is unless your hero has a hereditary heart condition the chances of even multiple eel shocks killing them is limited. Usually deaths attributed to electric eels are actually drownings, as they can knock a person unconscious, but generally not your fit healthy hero types. Shocking they may be, but no more than the latest scandal involving the heir to the dutchy of Northumberland and the girl who works at Tesco’s…

Then of course there is the other problem, all be it a problem of semantics, you don’t actually get a fry of electric eel’s, or a swarm, or even a bed of them… Because electric eels while very much a thing are not actually eels. They are in fact a species of South American knifefish, breath air, are more closely related to cat fish than eels and don’t swarm…

In the end, as ever, the only correct way to deal with an annoying hero infiltrating your super villain lair is to shoot then in the head on sight, without it may be added, revealing your plans and defiantly without any monologuing…

Also, we advise you add regular opticians appointments to the evil henchmen’s health plan. While we are aware having your henchmen all wearing glasses ruins the ‘stone faced bastards’ look. But lasers are not just for world domination and shooting down government satellites to plunge the world into chaos. they can also be used for corrective eye surgery these days.

Todays blog was brought to you by Psychotic Billionaire Monthly, the magazine of choice for the would be Super Villain