Hagfish: The world's slimiest creatures - Noah R. Bressman and Douglas Fudge
As the truck screeched to a halt,
one of its containers slid off,
hit an approaching Prius
and spilled its contents.
Those contents happened to be thousands
of kilograms of live hagfish,
also known as slime eels.
The result of this 2017 car accident
was an absolute mess:
the highway was littered
with wriggling fish
and coated in a thick slime that took
the fire department 7 hours to clear.
Astonishingly good looks aside,
the standout strength of all hagfishes
is their slime.
In fact, they’re probably
Earth’s slimiest animals.
But why be so slimy?
Watch and learn.
This hagfish has detected a dead fish
using its keen sense of smell
and the tastebud-like organs
dotting its skin.
Revealing imposing rows of toothlike
structures, it takes the first bite.
A shark glides on to the scene
and suddenly lunges.
Being caught in the shark’s powerful jaws
may seem like a guaranteed death sentence,
but the hagfish has some tricks
up its sleeve.
The shark’s teeth clench down
but there are no bones to crush—
only flexible cartilage.
And because the hagfish’s skin is so
loosely attached to the rest of its body,
the pressure from the bite
causes the hagfish’s essential organs
to slip out of the way,
avoiding damage.
This is where being a noodle
in a baggy wetsuit really pays off.
Meanwhile, the hagfish also actively
repels the shark
by spewing a stupendous supply of slime.
Around a hundred slime glands
line each side of the hagfish’s body.
Within them are mucus and thread cells.
The mucus cells are packed with hundreds
of vesicles of condensed mucus
while each thread cell contains
an intricately coiled protein fiber.
The hagfish contracts the muscles
surrounding some of its slime glands,
causing the cells to eject their contents
into the seawater.
In a fraction of a second,
the mucus vesicles swell and burst,
and the protein fibers unravel.
Together, they expand to 10,000 times
their original volume,
instantly creating liters of slime.
Because the substance is composed of mucus
and reinforced with numerous superfine
and strong silk-like fibers,
the slime is incredibly soft yet tough.
It lodges in the shark’s delicate gills,
and as the shark chokes
and tries to clear the slime,
it releases the hagfish.
Now, the hagfish is free
from the jaws of death.
But it’s in a dilemma of its own doing,
trapped in a cloud of its own
suffocating slime.
So what does it do?
Well, it ties itself in a knot, of course.
Starting at its tail
and passing its body through,
the hagfish effectively wipes away
its own slime.
Apparently unfazed by the whole encounter,
it returns to its meal.
When it gets to a tougher part
of the carcass...
Voila! The hagfish ties itself
in yet another knot
to gain leverage and yank off the meat.
The hagfish’s slime is so remarkable
that people are trying to emulate it.
Currently, a lot of athletic
and safety gear
is made from non-renewable
petroleum-based fibers.
But hagfish slime threads rival
the properties of materials like nylon.
And fibers modeled after those
in hagfish slime may present
a much more sustainable alternative.
Meanwhile, hagfish slime is also being
explored in military contexts
as a non-lethal weapon that could be used
to stop boats
by sliming up their propellers.
In addition to mastering
the art of slime and knot-tying,
hagfish have four little hearts
and can survive 36 hours
without oxygen unscathed.
Oh, and they also clean the seafloor
and cycle essential nutrients
in the deep sea.
Proto-hagfish were navigating
the ocean’s depths
more than 300 million years ago—
before dinosaurs roamed
and back when Pangea was still a thing.
Having persisted through multiple
mass extinction events,
hagfish have just about seen it all.
And it would appear that they’re still
having a wonderful slime.
