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How to levitate: walk barefoot on a muddy river bank and step on an eel. Some countries think them good to eat, while others think they are disgusting. To scientists, eels are irritatingly mysterious. We know that European and American eels breed in the Sargasso Sea but no one has succeeded in breeding them in captivity. People have hung them with jewellery, worshipped them as gods, and even fed human slaves to prized captive eels. Richard Schweid’s Consider the Eel (Da Capo Press/Perseus, $16.95/£13.50) mixes slippery tales with fabulous recipes. First catch your eel…