This summer’s science horror blockbuster is a remake: Return of the Leaping Electric Eel!

If you have any kind of phobia of slimy, snakelike creatures that can rise from the water and use their bodies like Tasers, this story — and the accompanying video — may not be for you.

The original tale (there was, alas, no video) dates to 1800 when the great explorer Alexander von Humboldt was in South America and enlisted local fishermen to catch some of these eels for the new (at the time) study of electricity.

He wrote that the men herded horses and mules into a shallow pond and let the eels attack by pressing themselves against the horses. The horses and mules tried to escape, but the fishermen kept them in the water until the eels used up their power. Two horses died, probably from falling and drowning.

Or so Humboldt said. Though the story was widely retold, no other report of this kind of fishing-with-horses phenomenon surfaced for more than 200 years, according to Kenneth Catania, a scientist with a passion for studying the eel species in question, electrophorus electricus.