Ken Catania

Media Appearances

• Electric eels inspire novel “jelly” batteries for soft robotics, wearables

  Vanderbilt University biologist and neuroscientist Kenneth Catania is one of the most prominent scientists studying electric eels these days. He has found that the creatures can vary the degree of voltage in their electrical discharges, using lower voltages for hunting purposes and higher voltages to stun and kill prey. Those higher voltages are also useful for tracking potential prey, akin to how bats use echolocation. One species, Volta's electric eel (Electrophorus voltai), can produce a discharge of up to 860 volts. In theory, if 10 such eels discharged at the same time, they could produce up to 8,600 volts of electricity—sufficient to power 100 light bulbs.

  July 17th, 2024

• These Tiny, Beautiful Wasps Eat the Hearts Out of Cockroaches

  “Since the 1800s, people have sort of had this mantra that parasitoids selectively avoid eating the vital organs of their host so that they can keep it alive,” said Kenneth Catania, a neuroecologist at Vanderbilt University. “And what I have found is that this parasitoid goes straight to the heart of the cockroach, and eats it.”

  October 29th, 2023

• Masters of worm grunting vibrate like moles to harvest bait

  Whether by the name of worm grunting, charming, or rooping, the idea is essentially the same: make the ground shake and wait for the worms to inch their way out. The origins of the practice aren’t clear, but Vanderbilt University biology professor Ken Catania thinks it could have been an accident; someone probably created vibrations while cutting down a tree and realized that worms responded, he says. Worm grunting has been practiced around the world for many decades, and reached a peak in Sopchoppy in the 1960s and ’70s before the US Forest Service limited it to permit holders.

  December 13th, 2022

• The strange life of the star condylure, the only mole able to hunt underwater

  That's just a sampling of the incredible things the stellate condylus is capable of, says Kenneth Catania , a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. "If I often use the word 'incredible', it's because that's really what these animals inspire in me," he explains. In fact, he used that word ten times to describe them during our conversation.

  February 15th, 2022

• Zombies, cows and coups

  We find out what trees in Chile can tell us about coups and we meet the wasp that performs a coup on a poor unsuspecting cockroach, turning it into a zombie and eating it alive.

  September 7th, 2023

• You asked. Ars answers. Here’s how to give an electric eel an MRI

  It's that ability that makes giving the creatures an MRI tricky. According to Vanderbilt University biologist and neuroscientist Kenneth Catania, the creatures can vary the degree of voltage in their electrical discharges, using lower voltages (around 10 or 12 volts, akin to a car battery) for sensing their environment, navigating, and hunting. "They live in murky waters where there's not much light or visibility," Van Bonn told Ars, which is why they have such tiny eyes. The eels use higher voltages (100 volts per foot of animal, typically amounting to between 400 and 500 volts) to stun and kill prey.

  December 14th, 2021

• The Speedy, Super-Sensitive Snouts Of Star-Nosed Moles

  They might look like something out of science fiction, but star-nosed moles are real-life creatures that can be found along the East Coast, including in Connecticut. These small, furry mammals are a bit larger than a house mouse and live underground in wetlands, digging tunnels with their enormous claws. But their most distinctive feature is their pink, star-shaped nose. Ken Catania, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, has studied the neurobiology of the star-nosed mole’s strange snout for decades. He told Where We Live about the science behind these incredible creatures.

  January 24th, 2020

• The Wasp Wants a Zombie. The Cockroach Says ‘No’ With a Karate Kick.

  Like a handler leading a horse, the wasp grabs hold of the roach’s antenna and steers it into a hole. There, it lays an egg on the roach that eventually hatches into a hungry larva that chows down on the cockroach. When the baby matures, it bursts from the roach’s chest ready to continue the gruesome ritual. “It’s kind of straight out of Alien,” said Kenneth Catania, a biologist from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, “and it’s about the only thing I can think of that’ll make you feel sorry for a cockroach.”

  November 27th, 2018

• How to Not Become a Zombie, Using Martial Arts

  A neurobiologist at Vanderbilt University, Catania has a track record of investigating unusual animals, many of which he studies single-handedly. He has worked on star-nosed moles, tentacled snakes, naked mole rats, electric eels, crocodiles, and, er, humans. “I like getting firsthand experience about the animals I find are most interesting,” he says. “I teach about the emerald cockroach wasp, so I went ahead and got some. I thought I would just start filming them to show students and flesh out my lectures, especially the Halloween one.” His videos, filmed at high speed, showed that the wasp’s attacks are all about the pronotum. If it gets its jaws on this plate, and delivers the first sting, “it’s game over,” says Catania. That happens roughly half the time without incident, usually when the wasp takes the cockroach unawares. But often, the cockroach defends itself.

  October 31st, 2018

• How cockroaches avoid becoming ‘zombies’ during wasp attacks

  Ken Catania, a biologist and professor at the school, videotaped interactions between the roaches and their predators — emerald jewel wasps — and studied their interactions. “It’s kind of a famous interaction in biology circles and beyond,” Catania told Fox News. An emerald jewel wasp will temporarily paralyze an American cockroach’s front legs and “weave its stinger through the cockroach’s throat into its brain,” essentially “zombifying” it, he explained.

  October 31st, 2018

• It's Like An 'Electric-Fence Sensation,' Says Scientist Who Let An Eel Shock His Arm

  Electric eels sometimes leap out of the water to increase the power of their jolt — and one scientist has been trying to understand this behavior more fully by letting a small eel repeatedly shock his arm. Ken Catania, a Vanderbilt University neurobiologist who has been studying electric eels in his lab, recently noticed something strange whenever he tried to fish them out with a net that had a metal rim and handle. The eels would leap out of the water to attack it. "Electric eels, in my experience, had never done something like that where they come out of the water, and they did it in a very directed way," he recalls.

  September 14th, 2017