Large and mighty as the sea is, so are there diverse organisms inhabiting it from the smallest plankton to the mightiest . The Hagfish is one of the nastiest creatures in the ocean. It has an eel-shaped body with worm-like resemblance . I don’t know what mother nature was thinking, creating what was supposed to be food with ejaculation that can turn predator fish into past tense in a matter of seconds.
Hagfishs are generally known to have average length of 50cm. They have elongated eel-like bodies resembling worms and move using their paddle-like tails. They are the only known animals to have a skull(Their skull is made of cartilage) with no vertebral column attached to it. It is believe by scientists that the structure of a modern hagfish looks very similar to fossils of a hagfish from 300 million years ago, suggesting they haven't evolved much since then.
To defend themselves in the open ocean where it is seen as food by almost every big fish including sharks, it produces slime, a milky mucus, as its defense mechanism. It releases this slime when it feels afraid or threatened in any way. This slime it produces is stickier than slime produced by other animals and also a lot more flexible. Slime of the hagfish is also lethal unlike slime produced by other fishes. If eaten, the slime interferes with a predator’s respiratory gills, causing them to “suffocate”.
If properly motivated, the hagfish can spit close to 5 gallons of lime in a matter of a few minutes. This is what happened when a car transporting hasfish on an oregona highway overturned, scaring hagfish into producing chunk loads of slime leaving the entire road covered in it. The hagfish were being transported to Japan where these fish are eaten as a delicacy.
If slime doesn’t scare away predators and the hagfish gets caught by predators, the hagfish ties itself up and release a lot more slime making it a lot more slippery and poisonous at the same time, and makes escape easier. This mechanism also suggests that if the hagfish doesn’t tie itself up, it risks its own slime suffocating it to death by getting in contact with its gills.
As if this wasn’t enough, the hagfish being a jawless scanvenger, enters the body of dead decaying animals through the softest body part, normally the anus and eats it from inside out. I know. Yike🤢🤮. Surprisingly, hagfish can go months without food when necessary.
Thank you for reading and for your time. See you in the next one.