True Eel Coloring Sheet

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Learning about eels is made possible by: journey through the entire Bible as a family with Answers Bible Curriculum for Homeschool by Answers in Genesis.

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Where Do Eels Come From?

Have you ever had a question that just sticks with you? One that you really want the answer to, but no matter how hard you try, it keeps leading to more questions?

Well, that’s exactly what happened with one slippery, slimy, mysterious creature: the eel. Scientists wondered where they came from for over 2,000 years—and the truth is, we still don’t know everything!

In this lesson, we’re diving deep into the mystery of eels and what makes them one of the wildest scientific puzzles in the animal kingdom.

Are All Eels Electric?

When you think of eels, you might imagine one zapping its way through the water. But here’s something surprising—electric eels aren’t even real eels!

Electric eels get their name because of how they look (long and snake-like), but they belong to a completely different group of fish. The true eels we’re exploring today—like the American eel and the European eel—are fascinating in their own right, even without the shock factor.

These true eels have slimy, flexible bodies and can even survive out of water for hours thanks to their mucus coating. But the most curious thing about them isn’t what they look like—it’s how they grow up.

What Is the Great Eel Question?

Let’s rewind all the way to 350 BC. Aristotle, one of the first naturalists, was puzzled by eels. He could never find eel eggs or baby eels, and he couldn’t tell the difference between male and female eels. So what did he think? That eels just… came out of the mud.

As strange as that sounds, he wasn’t alone. Pliny the Elder thought eels came from bits of eel skin scraped off on rocks. And some ancient Egyptians believed eels were born from the morning sun warming the river.

For centuries, scientists were stumped.

How Do Eels Have Babies?

It took until the 1700s for someone to find a female eel with eggs inside her body. That means for almost 2,000 years, scientists couldn’t even prove that eels reproduced like other animals.

Later, they discovered that eels go through metamorphosis—big changes as they grow. They start out looking like tiny flat ribbons called leptocephalus, then grow into glass eels (see-through and wiggly), then yellow eels, and finally silver eels, which are the grown-ups.

But there was still a big missing piece: Where were they hatching in the first place?

Where Do Eels Hatch?

That brings us to Johannes Schmidt, a scientist from Denmark who spent 17 years looking for baby eels. He studied hundreds of ocean samples and finally found newly hatched eels in the Sargasso Sea—a mysterious part of the Atlantic Ocean with no coastline, just surrounded by currents.

The Sargasso Sea is full of floating seaweed called sargassum and acts like a nursery for baby eels. We now know that both American and European eels hatch here and then drift for thousands of miles on ocean currents.

Eventually, the baby eels (called leptocephalus) reach the coasts as they grow into glass eels. They swim into freshwater rivers and grow into yellow eels, and settle down into a freshwater home for the next 15–30 years. When it’s time to lay eggs, they grow into silver eels and swim all the way back to the Sargasso Sea to start the cycle again.

But here’s the twist—we still don’t know how they find their way back, or even why they choose that one spot.

What Eels Teach Us About God’s Creation

For a long time, people believed in something called spontaneous generation—the idea that living things could suddenly appear on their own, perhaps coming from mud or old food. But God’s Word tells a different story.

Hebrews 11:3 says,

“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

God didn’t need mud or sunlight or magic to create eels. He created everything from nothing, just by His Word. Every stage of the eel’s life—every transformation, every journey across the ocean—is part of God’s incredible design.