As an undergraduate, Catania worked as a research assistant at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. while attending the University of Maryland, College Park.
[1] He studies animal sensory systems, brain organization, and behavior in diverse species including star-nosed moles,[2] water shrews,[3] naked mole-rats,[4] alligators and crocodiles,[5] snakes,[6] earthworms,[7] and electric eels.
[8] His studies often focus on predators that have evolved special senses and weapons to find and overcome elusive prey and he is considered an expert in extreme animal behaviors.
[10] Catania was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2006[11] and in 2013 he received the Pradel Research Award in Neurosciences from the National Academy of Sciences for "highly imaginative investigations of the neural basis of sensory behavior in model organisms" and "discoveries of fundamental principles of behavior, sensory processing, and brain organization".
His discovery of a "mechanism similar to a taser" in an electric eel by absorbing the shock through his fingertips was widely covered in the popular press.