Slippery Beast
A True Crime Natural History, with Eels
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Slippery Beast
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Narrated by:
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Coleen Marlo
About this listen
What is it about eels? Depending on who you ask, they are a pest, a fascination, a threat, a pot of gold. Eels emerged some 200 million years ago, weathered mass extinctions and continental shifts, and were once among the world's most abundant freshwater fish. But since the 1970s, their numbers have plummeted. Because eels-as unagi-are another thing: delicious.
In Slippery Beast, journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell travels in the world of "eel people," pursuing a fascination with this mysterious creature. Despite centuries of study by thinkers from Aristotle to Leeuwenhoek to Sigmund Freud, much about eels remains unknown. Eels cannot be bred reliably in captivity and infant eels are unbelievably valuable. A pound of the tiny, translucent, bug-eyed "elvers" caught in the fresh waters of Maine can command $3,000 or more on the black market. Illegal trade in eels is an international scandal measured in billions of dollars every year. In Maine, federal investigators have risked their lives to bust poaching rings.
Ruppel Shell follows the elusive eel from Maine to the Sargasso Sea, stalking riversides, fishing holes, laboratories, restaurants, courtrooms, and America's first commercial eel "family farm." This is an enthralling, globe-spanning look at an animal that you may never come to love, but which will never fail to astonish you.
©2024 Ellen Ruppel Shell (P)2024 TantorRelated to this topic
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Story5 out of 5 stars 8
Sharks have been on this planet for over 400 million years, so there is a lot they can teach us about survival and adaptability. For example: how do sharks, which unlike other fish are denser than water, stay afloat? They keep moving. When Jasmin Graham, an award-winning young shark scientist, started to feel that the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist was pulling her under, she remembered this important lesson: keep moving forward.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inspiring and Relatable
- By Kindle Customer on 08-24-24
By: Jasmin Graham
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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- By: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrated by: Sara Imari Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
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5 out of 5 stars
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very interesting
- By Sequoia Spencer on 08-09-24
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Lucid Dying
- The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death
- By: Sam Parnia MD PhD
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story5 out of 5 stars 9
Today, for the first time in history, the scientific exploration of death and what happens when we die is real, active and ongoing. Contrary to popular perceptions, this subject is no longer the remit of philosophy, religion, or personal opinion. Truly remarkable scientific discoveries that will fundamentally affect everyone’s lives now and in the future are taking place, yet very few people are aware of them. Most people—including scientists and doctors—maintain strong beliefs about death and its experience. Those beliefs are rooted in traditional, and often cultural, notions of death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excited to See Scientific Rigor Applied to This Vital Topic
- By Mav on 08-27-24
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Impossible Monsters
- Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
- By: Michael Taylor
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story4 out of 5 stars 9
Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Repetitive and not that interesting
- By Michael on 09-09-24
By: Michael Taylor
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Homewrecker
- By: J M Dalgliesh
- Narrated by: Tamsin Kennard, Alison Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 28
When I first meet Sophie, she seems like any normal loving mother, trying desperately to help her teenage daughter. That’s where I come in. The perfect tutor to get Katie’s life back on track. I connect instantly with Katie, and Sophie’s thoughtful husband Scott. But Sophie’s dark eyes are full of jealousy when I talk to Scott or share a smile with Katie. I know I’m helping her daughter, whatever she thinks.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not nearly as good as his usual books.
- By Ann Palmer,Ann Palmer,Ann Palmer,Ann Palmer on 10-05-24
By: J M Dalgliesh
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Most Delicious Poison
- The Story of Nature's Toxins―from Spices to Vices
- By: Noah Whiteman
- Narrated by: Noah Whiteman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?
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2 out of 5 stars
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Off topic
- By Stewart on 12-26-23
By: Noah Whiteman
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Mississippi Swindle
- Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal That Shocked America
- By: Shad White
- Narrated by: Eric Burgher
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
This riveting exposé details how a small team of auditors and investigators, led by the youngest State Auditor in the country, uncovered a brazen scheme where the powerful stole millions in welfare funds from the poor in a sprawling conspiracy that stretched from Mississippi to Malibu.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shad White is the real MVP
- By michael on 08-07-24
By: Shad White
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The Devil Behind the Badge
- The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer
- By: Rick Jervis
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect—Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well researched
- By Tiffany on 10-07-24
By: Rick Jervis
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Midnight in Moscow
- A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia's War Against the West
- By: John J. Sullivan, General Jim Mattis
- Narrated by: John J. Sullivan, Matt Godfrey
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
A memoir of service by the American ambassador who was on the diplomatic front lines when Putin invaded Ukraine, Midnight in Moscow is the first behind-the-scenes account of how U.S.-Russia relations hit their nadir—and a playbook for our unfolding confrontation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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FASCINATING & Troubling
- By Satoru on 09-26-24
By: John J. Sullivan, and others
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Sneakerhead
- By: Amanda Eyre Ward
- Narrated by: Amanda Eyre Ward, Timothy Harrison Meckel
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4 out of 5 stars 124
When Amanda Eyre Ward's 13-year-old son, Harry, dove headfirst into the world of sneaker culture, she found herself baffled by his obsession with flashy, expensive shoes that seemed like mere status symbols. Determined to bridge the gap with her teenage son, Ward reluctantly decided to embrace the mantra of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". As she shed her preconceptions and immersed herself in the quest to snag the latest drops, Ward discovered a community far richer than she had imagined.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ima be honest.
- By Bryant SUPREME on 08-12-24
By: Amanda Eyre Ward
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White Robes and Broken Badges
- Infiltrating the KKK and Exposing the Evil Among Us
- By: Joe Moore
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
In this shocking memoir, a former FBI informant reveals what he learned from successfully infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the backwoods of the Sunshine State, uncovering details about the hate group’s structure and its modern far-right spinoffs which are operating to achieve the same goal: inciting a second civil war by whatever violent means necessary.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Honest, historically accurate portrayal
- By Jaime on 08-20-24
By: Joe Moore