the.com/hagfish
the only animal that can drown a shark in its own slime.
means A primitive, eel-shaped marine creature that lacks jaws and a true backbone, famous for secreting copious amounts of slime when threatened.
from A plain English compound of "hag" and "fish." The "hag" part likely points to the creature's ugly, witch-like appearance and its grim habit of burrowing into dead and dying fish to feed — "hag" being an old word for a repulsive old woman or a hellish creature, possibly related to forms across Germanic languages. So the name reads, roughly, as "the witch-fish": a fitting tag for something this unsettling.
- slime defense
- One can fill a bucket with slime in minutes
- ancient design
- Survived 300 million years nearly unchanged
- no jaw
- Eats by tying itself in knots for leverage
- skin breathing
- Absorbs nutrients directly through its skin
- dead skull
- Has a skull but no spine at all
eptatretus stoutii — pacific hagfish species that produces slime through mucus glands when threatened, studied extensively at oregon state university
myxine glutinosa — atlantic hagfish found in north atlantic waters, can produce up to 20 liters of slime in minutes as defense mechanism