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The correct name for the slime eel is “hagfish”. Hagfish many people called the ugliest, the most disgusting creatures, however, in my opinion, if ugly, with blobfish, if than nausea, maggots in the flesh, parasites are less convinced of the bar. But there must be something special about the hagfish that many people recognize. So just how ugly and gross are hagfish? What is the use of this creature? Let's talk about that.
All hagfish are Marine benthic fish, hiding only their heads (or mouths, to be exact) in the mud. Although hagfish have no sight, most hagfish have three to four pairs of palps around their mouths. These palps are their olfactory organs. They can use these palps to accurately pick up the direction and general position of food.
Hagfish are absolute carnivores, although they don't seem aggressive. But only because it didn't open its round mouth. And that's where hagfish are ugliest. The hagfish's mouth is shaped like a suction cup, and it has a strong ability to absorb, much like an aquarium scavenger. Inside the suck-shaped mouth are four rows of sharp, keratinized teeth. These teeth, though keratinized, are sharp enough to nibble the skin and flesh of other fish. (This is not much uglier ~)
Hagfish feed mainly on dying or dead fish, and when they spot prey, they dart upstream to catch it. Hagfish have flexible bodies that can quickly cut a gap in a fish's side with their toothed tongues. When the prey is a large fish. They wrap their bodies in a half-knot, with the front of the knot dividing into fulcrums. Acting like a lever to generate more force, allowing the hagfish to poke its head into the body of its prey, the hagfish feeds so quickly that it is soon fully inside the prey and devouring the flesh. In fact, trawlers often catch ghastly, almost hollow fish carcasses, among which lie well-fed hagfish.
It can drill into the abdominal cavity from the gills of big fish, bite viscera and muscles in the belly of big fish, eat while excrete, and finally bite through the abdominal muscles of big fish, break out. Hagfish eat a lot. A hagfish can eat up to 18 times its own weight if it stays inside a large fish for seven hours, sometimes reducing a fish to skin and bone. Hundreds of hagfish have been found inside a single cod fish that has been gutted.
It's not enough that hagfish eat meat with their tentacle-lined mouths. They suck up nutrients from dead bodies directly through their skin. The salt concentration in hagfish tissue was the same as in the water they normally inhabit, suggesting that the dissolved material could pass through their skin. In order to prove this kind of animal can absorb nutrients like absorb salt, Christchurch, New Zealand physiologist at the university of Canterbury, Chris glover and his colleagues took a blind eel skin, its stretched, into a bottle, there is similar to the solution of the water on one side of the skin of the other side of the solution of similar hagfish body fluids. In seawater, the researchers dissolved radioactive amino acids, sugars and food coloring to test how permeable hagfish skin was. After a few hours, the hagfish skin becomes radioactive as it absorbs the amino acids; However, food pigments cannot penetrate the hagfish's skin, suggesting that the skin can choose to absorb nutrients.
Each hagfish species has more than 50 mucus pores on both sides of its body, with some members of the subfamily hagfish having more than 100 mucus pores. These mucous pores have only one function, and that is to secrete slimy mucus
When hagfish are frightened or hunted by predators, they secrete a large amount of mucus, which is sticky even in water and difficult to get rid of, helping hagfish escape in time.
And the mucus produced by hagfish makes them even more nauseous. When threatened, hagfish excrete secretions from their mucous pores, forming a gelatinous mass around their bodies that is so thick they can literally chew and tear and mess up.
But using mucus as a weapon has one big, obvious drawback. The slime is very sticky, and it comes from the hagfish itself, so doesn't it stick to itself first? This weapon, which can kill a hundred enemies and lose 3,000 men, obviously has serious operational problems. Even if the enemy did give up because of the mucus, how would he get away?
But hagfish do have a way. When the slime clogs a predator's mouth or even plugs its gills, they tie their bodies into a backhand knot, slip through it, and slowly swim to safety.
Hence the hagfish's reputation as an "ugly and disgusting" creature, partly because it has no head but a suction-cup mouth with four rows of teeth, partly because it eats the delicious food of fish carcasses, even decaying ones, and partly because it secretes large amounts of slippery slime.
Hagfish are useful, of course. As a fish, its first function is to eat it. The hagfish truck in the U.S. news is destined for an airport, while the plane's final destination is South Korea. Once in Korea, the hagfish are turned into a delicious and expensive dish. Hagfish are also eaten in Japan, Europe and the United States. Hagfish meat is also found to be high in vitamins, unsaturated fatty acids and DNA, making it a tonic. (I don't really want to eat it anyway)
Second, hagfish slime is a good thing. Research into hagfish slime is still in its early stages, but it could unlock new materials that could be used in a variety of applications.
As mentioned earlier, the U.S. Navy has successfully synthesized hagfish slime and plans to use it as a weapon in combat because it can immobilize and even suffocate targets. However, the team thinks the slime could be used for more applications, such as body armor, diving suits, fighting fires and as a substitute for petroleum-derived materials.
Hagfish are ugly on the outside, and they're disgusting, but it's just the mouth and mucus that are disgusting. Once you get rid of those two parts, the meat is delicious, and that's why people in many countries like to eat hagfish. And compared to the ugly, disgusting creatures of nature, hagfish are just fine.
