{"id":477882,"date":"2026-06-05T15:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/477882\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T15:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:33:09","slug":"where-do-these-baby-eels-come-from-its-still-a-mystery-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/477882\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do these baby eels come from? It\u2019s still a mystery : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Scientists still have not pinpointed the spawning grounds of the European eel. Finding it could mean safeguarding the species.<\/p>\n

Colin Milkins\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Colin Milkins\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

More than a century ago, all that people knew about European eels was that they lived in the rivers and streams for decades \u2014 until they swam out to the ocean and never returned. Eventually, tiny eels would show up and the cycle would start again. Where did the adult eels go? Where did the baby eels come from? Did they even reproduce at all or just spontaneously emerge into being? Science now has some \u2014 but not all \u2014 of the answers to these questions. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber<\/a> talks to fish physiologist Arjan Palstra<\/a> about this mystery and how close scientists are to solving it.<\/p>\n

If you liked this episode, check out our episode on the Pacific lamprey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interested in more science mysteries? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org\/shortwave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This episode was produced by Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists still have not pinpointed the spawning grounds of the European eel. Finding it could mean safeguarding the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-477882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}