Skip to main content

Slime Eels

-Guest post by ES-

Looking for a strange creature to go in your book? This one's perfect and IT ACTUALLY EXISTS!

Hagfish, or more commonly known as Slime eels, are a group of jawless soft bodied organisms that belong to the Myxinidae family. There are more than sixty different types of hagfish living in the midnight zone worldwide and not much is known about them. They have developed an extraordinary defense mechanism and are expert scavengers. I hope you will enjoy reading this post and find it very helpful.

Food:

Hagfish have an excellent sense of smell and touch but even though they have two tiny markings that could be mistaken for eyes Hagfish happen to be blind. Sight is not needed if you live in the inky blackness at the bottom of the sea, so they have adapted to the desolate landscape and have become expert scavengers. If they happen to stumble upon a dead fish, Hagfish lacking teeth have an extraordinary method of consuming their find. They use their rasping tongue to suck out a chunk of flesh and tie themselves into knots somehow moving that knot up and down their body so they can pull their head out of the fish. They do it about three or four times more to make an entrance way before eating the fish inside out.

Defence:

Hagfish have one of the most extraordinary defence mechanisms of the fish kingdom when they feel
threatened hagfish ooze sticky elastic slime made up of mucins (a substance found in saliva) and protein threads out of white slime glands on their rubbery-like skin and tie themselves into knots making them difficult for the predator to catch and eat. If the unfortunate predator happens to bite a hagfish the slime will choke it to death and the Hagfish will usually escape unharmed. This amazing reaction has kept these creatures alive since three hundred million years ago. ( some people call them “the living fossils”! ) 

Habitat:

Being scavengers Hagfish don’t have a certain place to stay, rest or even lay their eggs, so they have been found curled up in little groups in the cold murky blackness in the twilight zone at the bottom of the sea worldwide. The ocean is divided into three zones which include the sunlight zone, the twilight zone, and the midnight zone depending on how far the sunlight can reach.


Thanks for reading! 

Want to write a guest post? Drop us an email, or share a doc with us: writingmafia@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Strange One

An unsteady little fox kit blinked, opening her eyes she wobbled after her siblings. Taking her first steps outside the den, watching the others do the same. Their brown-black eyes gleamed in the light. Most of the other fox kits were playing, a tangled mess of dark brown fur and legs as they tumbled, chasing each other around mossy rocks and through short green grass. Some of the older foxes were lounging, gathered around a small circle of rocks. The fox kit stumbled over, her legs still not quite used to the rough ground. The circle smelled fresh, soaked in the scent of damp earth; something clear and silvery-blue filled the hole in the ground. She leaned towards it, trying to get a better look, paws scrambling for purchase on the smooth slippery stones. With no success, her paws slipped, sending her tumbling down into the pool of clear liquid. It was only water. But she didn't know that then. She landed with a splash, the liquid soaking her coat and making her shiver. S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spoiler-Free Book Review - The Squire's Tales (Gerald Morris)

Okay, so it's technically an entire series, but that's irrelevant. I am reviewing books and it is therefore a book review.  The Squire's Tales , by Gerald Morris, is a series of novels that retell in hilarious fashion the lesser known tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Don't worry, you won't have to hear about the sword in the stone again or anything at all about Arthur's childhood. Because this is where the best part comes in: these stories are told from the perspectives of those that other renditions tend to gloss over, mock or forget entirely. These characters are a squire, (as the title would imply) a page, three women and a knight who is objectively terrible at being a knight. He sings and plays music instead. His name's Dinadan. He's wonderful. Over the ten books in the series, you get seven different characters from whose points of view the stories are told (plus a couple extra in the last book, but that's a spec...
Post a Comment
Read more