Bioelectronics (Living Batteries)

[John Bryan <jbryan@micron.net>]

Hello EV people,
	I was recently studying the electronic mechanisms used by creatures
that use electricity as a defensive strategy, such as some eels and rays.
I was fascinated to learn that the ones who live in a salt water environment,
take advantage of the highly conductive medium and wire their batteries in
parallel for greater current. The ones who live in fresh water need greater
voltage to overcome the much higher resistence, so wire their batteries in
series! The batteries in the Electric ray are composed of a large number of
hexagonal columns holding a pile of plates and filled with a jelled 
electrolyte. The number of plates per column may be 140 to a thousand or 
more. In a large ray it could be up to half a million plates. An average
Torpedo ray puts out 50 amps at 50-60 volts, but a large one may put out
200 volts. I hope other EVers also enjoy this interesting bit of trivia.

John Bryan