Could an animal species evolve to use electricity?

Question

Yesterday I was driving at night on an unlit road (nothing nefarious, I swear), and there was a truck behind me with a ridiculous amount of headlamps on, and catching a glimpse of it in my mirror it looked a bit like an angry animal. It got me to thinking, if there was an animal that could switch on headlights in the jungle, it could scare off quite a lot of predators.

Now I know that there are fish, like the electric eel (whose scientific name is "Electrophorus Electricus", which I find rather hilarious) that can use electricity for hunting and communication and self-defence. But I'm wondering if an entire species (like all types of cats for example) could have evolved to use electricity for similar purposes.

And I'm not talking properly Pikachu style, just channel enough electrons to create a bright light source for a limited amount of time, to scare off predators or to startle prey for example.

I don't know if this would be through bio-luminescence, like an angler fish, or more like an actual light bulb, by running electrons through some sort of natural filament to create the light. Whichever one is possible to create a significant amount of light really.

This animal doesn't necessarily have to have evolved on the Earth we live in now, it could have any conditions to evolve.

So my main points of the question are:

1. Could an animal evolve to use electricity which could power, let's say as an example, two 85 watt bulbs for 5-10 seconds?

2. Could an animal use this electricity to produce things like light for their survival and that of their family, be it through hunting or protection?

3. Bonus: If such an animal/species were to exist in a habitat on land (like in the mighty jungle), would other animals that currently exist on our planet be able to coexist with this animal, as its predator or its prey? Or would they need to evolve to be able to catch/escape it?

Answer 1

This doesn't sound too unreasonable except that organisms rarely use electricity to create light. Metal filaments are in short supply in nature.

1: Yes but you'd need a decent explanation. Perhaps a large decedent of something like an electric eel which evolved to prey on very large prey and needs to provide a large jolt. Though they're unlikely to produce a 5-10 second pulse since a shorter more powerful pulse is more likely to be useful as a weapon.

2: It tends to be vastly more efficient to make light with chemicals.Doing so with electricity wastes a lot of energy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/11/AR2010101104495.html

Some species glow as a warning that they're poisonous; others confuse or blind attackers by releasing clouds or jets of light-emitting chemicals while trying to escape.

Some marine organisms, if attacked, produce what scientists call a burglar alarm - a visual 911 call designed to attract a larger fish that's only too happy to gobble up the flashy prey's assailant.

3:I don't see why not though out of water such an animal would probably need direct physical contact. If it was a major predator you can be sure other species would evolve many methods for counteracting electrical shocks.

Answer 2

Electric Eel produces enough electricity to light a LED bulb for half a second. Traditional filament bulb - not really.

In the electric eel, some 5,000 to 6,000 stacked electroplaques are capable of producing a shock at up to 600 volts and 1 ampere of current (600 watts) for a duration of two milliseconds.

I'm not sure if it would manage 160 watt for 10-15 seconds, but it's well enough to seriously shock any animal (including humans) that threaten the eel.

Light bulbs are terribly lossy; they have light efficiency of order of 0.5%. Chemical-electric luminescence is far more efficient and quite a few species of the deep can "power" their glowing cells through neuroelectric impulses.