The Incredible Hagfish

Hagfish are really remarkable creatures that resemble eels, but lack jaws and backbones. They can hunt by pulling unsuspecting fish down into their burrows, but more typically scavenge dead carcasses on the seafloor.

NPS Photo.

Since they cannot bite, they eat by scraping flesh with plates of tooth-like cartilage in their mouths, or just absorbing nutrients straight through their skin by contact. These eyeless animals also possess the unique ability to tie their body in a knot, which they can slide from head to tail or vice versa to gain leverage when eating or to rid themselves of the copious amounts of defensive slime they produce.

Produced from skin glands when the hagfish is stressed or under attack, this slime starts out as less than a teaspoon but soon expands to 10,000 times that volume! This web of mucus and protein threads are not sticky, instead is one of the softest materials measured (Jello is up to 100,000 times stiffer). The stuff is used to choke and rapidly clog the gills of any attacker. Hagfish skin is extremely loose and only attaches to the rest of the body in several places, so when bitten, the creatures are able to squeeze around the bite, avoiding most injuries.

Prius covered with Hagfish slime after a truck full of the animals overturned on an Oregon highway.