Who Knew??

...that a Moray Eel could have a slipped disc?? This is a very cool story!

Veterinarians look to canine world to help injured eel 

Of Eels and Wiener Dogs

by Paul Bowers

The team of veterinarians at the Charleston Veterinary Referral Center doesn't see a lot of eels. So when Dr. Jason King deduced that a green moray eel from the South Carolina Aquarium had a slipped invertebral disc, he drew on his knowledge of house pets.

"We see it fairly often in dachshunds," says King, a neurologist at the 24-hour clinic who saw the six-foot-long patient on Sept. 22. In both eels and wiener dogs, he reasoned, an out-of-place disk can pinch nerves in the spine and lead to weakness or even paralysis. Jason Cassell, an aquarist at the S.C. Aquarium who is in charge of day-to-day care for the snakelike creature, had been the first to notice problems. He says he has never named the fish (only the more popular animals get nicknames) and does not know whether it is male or female (eels have no external sex organs), but in conversation he refers to it as a male.

"His posture was different from how he normally sits," Cassell says. Ordinarily, the eel could often be seen at the bottom of the Great Ocean tank with its back half resting in the gravel and its front half elevated. But starting in September, it became less active and tended to contort itself sideways at a 90-degree angle. It also had a hard time turning right.

Read more and see an eel about to go into a CT scanner