Angel the schnauzer strolled to the coffee table, stood up on his back legs, and pushed a nose toward the fruit platter. As dogs are known to do when food is left unattended. But this wasn’t just any dog—and his owner wasn’t just any owner. From across the room a sound rose, crisp and familiar to any fan of the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. PSSHHT. A hand, tensed into a claw, rose in the air. The dog froze. Again: PSSHHT. (A commanding sound! Grabs attention and shows who's the boss!) Slowly, Angel backed down to the floor, walked away from the table, and curled up silently near his master's feet.

Last week on Top Chef, contestants broke out their filleting knives for a Quickfire challenge judged by guest Eric Ripert, chef and part owner of the world famous French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin in New York City.

First up to fillet were sardines—-hard to debone because of their small size but pretty standard fare. Next came arctic char—-much bigger, still fairly familiar. Then came something rarely seen on dinner menus, much less in home kitchens—-freshwater eel.

We at Pop Omnivore wondered why we knew so little about eel as food. So we decided to investigate.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, eels are “snakelike fish with a smooth slippery skin." The culinary encyclopedia then goes on to say, "Eels are sold alive. They are killed and skinned at the last moment as the flesh deteriorates rapidly, and the raw blood is poisonous if it enters a cut – for example, on one’s finger.” Cooking the eel detoxifies its blood.

On the show, Chef Ripert told contestants that the eels had just been killed and were definitely dead, even though they continued to move. Though the movement is strictly nerve-related and not a sign of life, it can be, well, unnerving. Says Ripert, “They will move for hours. Seriously, for hours.” Indeed, many of the chefs looked squeamish as they dealt with the rather gruesome process of peeling and filleting their challenge.

Admit it: You watched the Super Bowl ads—and laughed at the one where a bunch of clothed chimps were working on a car in a suburban guy’s home garage. A neighbor asks the guy, “What’s with the chimps?” The guy replies, “They’re grease monkeys. I love ’em.”

Not everyone loves ‘em.

I spoke with critic Robert Shumaker, director of orangutan research at the Great Ape Trust, a research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, that studies the primates.