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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your uncle's army buddy who makes superb
Speaker 2: banana bread. Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 2: First off, I know you you're either like a fuck
Speaker 2: with a hagfish or you're like, ah, yes, hagfish, but
Speaker 2: an hour of hagfish. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Here's a
Speaker 2: secret you need to know. We are all hagfish. We're
Speaker 2: shy sometimes, but we have friends, we have preferences, we
Speaker 2: can make do we have hidden talents. Sometimes people underestimate
Speaker 2: us until they realize our superpowers and then they stand
Speaker 2: back and they marvel. And by marvel, I mean listen
Speaker 2: to a whole episode about hagfish. But before we dive
Speaker 2: into the deep sea of this slimy hour, let's first
Speaker 2: buy tradition. Thank all the folks on patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash Ologies who make these episodes possible. We'll hear some
Speaker 2: of their hagfish queries later. And to all the folks
Speaker 2: buying ologies merch at the link in the show notes
Speaker 2: and sporting it, and of course to all of you
Speaker 2: kind souls who have rated and subscribed to the pod
Speaker 2: and also left your reviews for Old Dad Word, which
Speaker 2: I read by lantern light with a tear in my eye,
Speaker 2: such as this week. Jen Bagels just wrote, Ali, I
Speaker 2: hope you really do read every review because I want
Speaker 2: you to know that the world is a better place
Speaker 2: because you're in it. I don't deserve that. That's too nice.
Speaker 2: Don't make me cry. Kseup HD, which I guess I'm
Speaker 2: realizing just now is ksu PhD So sorry says here.
Speaker 2: There's a tip. Don't cherry pick the episodes you think
Speaker 2: you'll be interested in just Bingjamal. They're all delightful, thanks,
Speaker 2: case Uphd. Okay, hagfish hagfish Okay. First off, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have to wait to hear how hagfish got its name. Sorry,
Speaker 2: it was a common Patreon question. We're gonna address it later.
Speaker 2: This is as clickbaity as I get. Secondly, yes, the
Speaker 2: term hagfishology has been used before. I did not make
Speaker 2: it up. A twenty thirteen biology graduate student seminar schedule
Speaker 2: included the talk quote Adventures in Hagfishology, Sulfate Transport and
Speaker 2: extra Brinkial Mechanisms of ion regulation in Pacific Hagfish by
Speaker 2: Alex Clifford, so Hagfishology, the titles legit Haters. So this
Speaker 2: episode exists because science journalist Ed Yong wrote an article
Speaker 2: for The Atlantic in January with the headline no one
Speaker 2: is prepared for hagfish slime, and he was so right.
Speaker 2: It included photos from a twenty seventeen traffic accident in
Speaker 2: Oregon in which seventy five hundred pounds of hagfish tipped
Speaker 2: over on a windy, foresty highway and slicked the roads
Speaker 2: and the cars in incomprehensible amounts of slime. I immediately
Speaker 2: started googling hagfish scientists. I had a few on the list,
Speaker 2: and I was thrilled to see that they were based
Speaker 2: in southern California. They were on my spreadsheet. A few
Speaker 2: weeks ago. My friend wildlife educator Mallory Lindsey, who was amazing,
Speaker 2: went to the same lab and I messaged her and
Speaker 2: I was like, I've been wanting to do an episode
Speaker 2: on this. How are they? The next day my phone rang.
Speaker 2: It was a hagfish ologist, just using the phone like
Speaker 2: it was nineteen ninety seven. It's so charming. So we
Speaker 2: met a few days later on a street corner near
Speaker 2: Chapman Campus in Orange County, and he has a bright smile,
Speaker 2: kind of surfer esque golden hair and a ruddy beard.
Speaker 2: And we drove around looking for parking, because again this
Speaker 2: is southern California. And then we hit the lab and
Speaker 2: he showed me gurgling chili saltwater tanks filled with a
Speaker 2: few dozen soft, pinkish, purplish gray floppy hot dogs with mouths,
Speaker 2: and then he let me create a one in my
Speaker 2: open palm, and it felt like a very floppy hot dog,
Speaker 2: like if God put a face on an intestine and
Speaker 2: just stopped. There were these specimens, slimy, not really, until
Speaker 2: this ologist urged me to annoy one, give it a
Speaker 2: little pinch, he coaxed. Milliseconds later, it seemed my hand
Speaker 2: was drenched in a thick veil of elephant snot I
Speaker 2: was transfixed. So hagfish are disgusting and they deserve our respect.
Speaker 2: So this ologist, as you will hear from the dulcet
Speaker 2: tones of his Canadian accent, hails from the North and
Speaker 2: he got his bachelor's and masters studying zoology at the
Speaker 2: University of Guelph. Whilst there he happened to take an
Speaker 2: invertebrate zoology class with hagfish master doctor Douglas Fudge, with
Speaker 2: whom he now works as a research associate at Chapman.
Speaker 2: So prepare to hear about swift escapes, outlasting extinction events,
Speaker 2: the mysteries of the deep. Why you, I guess, don't
Speaker 2: always need a spine eating your way out of a
Speaker 2: dead thing, disappearing without a trace, and like a slippery
Speaker 2: messiah converting water into slime with human delight. And professional
Speaker 2: hagfishologist Tim Weingart. And now I don't know if you
Speaker 2: know this, but you are technically a hagfish ologist. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: If I've ever heard it put that way, but I've
Speaker 3: probably won a few.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I looked it up to see if there was
Speaker 2: a like a more Latin sounding name. Yeah. And the
Speaker 2: term that's been used the most to describe what you
Speaker 2: study is literally hagfish ologists. Like there are people have
Speaker 2: used that word before, So yeah, it's a thing hagfishlge
Speaker 2: or run with it? What is a hagfish for someone
Speaker 2: who's never seen or touched one?
Speaker 3: So I guess the best way to describe them is
Speaker 3: they're a benthic deep sea dweller. Right, So essentially all
Speaker 3: hagfish share that in common. They all live along the
Speaker 3: bottom substrate of the oceans, and the majority of them
Speaker 3: below one hundred meters in depth or about three hundred
Speaker 3: feet right.
Speaker 2: So side note this allog just jumps between metric and
Speaker 2: us y are we still not metric measurements, so I
Speaker 2: don't have to convert it, thank freaking God.
Speaker 3: So what they are is a jawless, primitive eel like creature. Right.
Speaker 3: I'm hesitant to call them a fish, even though it's
Speaker 3: in their name, because they aren't necessarily a traditional fish, right.
Speaker 3: They they lack scales, they lack jaws, they lack eyes,
Speaker 3: they lack what we would traditionally referred to as fins.
Speaker 3: So they're in many ways a very primitive version of
Speaker 3: a modern day fish.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They're thought to have diverged at around the same time
Speaker 3: that vertebrates popped up on the evolutionary spectrum.
Speaker 2: So these augers are old old.
Speaker 1: My god, you're so old.
Speaker 2: Yeah? How many millions of years do you think?
Speaker 3: So there's fossil evidence up to three hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million years, but they're likely over five hundred million years old. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So among some of the first like really highly organized, cephalized,
Speaker 3: which means essentially like head focused creatures. So hagfish for
Speaker 3: a long time were defined as crane its, which means
Speaker 3: that they have a cranium surrounding their but they have
Speaker 3: no calcification of anything in their body, so it's all cartilage. Right,
Speaker 3: So they do have a notochord. They have many of
Speaker 3: these features that are very vertebrate in a way, but
Speaker 3: lacking calcification, lacking gills, lacking jaws, all these other features
Speaker 3: place them in a much more and not even hesitate
Speaker 3: to say primitive, but I guess they are primitive features.
Speaker 3: Even though hagfish themselves are obviously as ancient as they are,
Speaker 3: they're also very modern, right, like the hagfish we see today,
Speaker 3: we really don't know how much they relate to the
Speaker 3: hagfish of the past.
Speaker 2: Right. PS. If you're like notochord, I got you. So
Speaker 2: a notochord is by definition, a cartilaginous skeletal rod supporting
Speaker 2: the body. You had one, You had one as a
Speaker 2: tinted tiny embryo. So it's like a backbone in that
Speaker 2: it gives support and structure, but it's not a backbone
Speaker 2: in that it's not bony segmented vertebrae. Oh, and the
Speaker 2: hagfish has a brain case. It isn't a skull. It's
Speaker 2: like a cartilage rib cage around their brain lump. And
Speaker 2: in the hagfish world there has been decades of heated
Speaker 2: dramatic That's how I like to imagine it. Debate on
Speaker 2: whether hagfish never developed a backbone or if they had
Speaker 2: one and then just devolved the other way, gradually get
Speaker 2: rid of the sucker. Oh and their eyes in the skull,
Speaker 2: so kind of like a handsome, lanky drifter who's also
Speaker 2: slimy and eats corpses. Their backstory is still a mystery.
Speaker 3: Through fossil evidence, of which there's only two. It makes
Speaker 3: it a bit of a limited jump in terms of
Speaker 3: what you can say.
Speaker 2: There's two fossils of hagfish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, soft bodied creatures don't fossilize well, right, So when
Speaker 3: they do die and end up in the bottom sediment.
Speaker 3: Their tissues are so similar to everything else around them
Speaker 3: that they don't end up distinct like other animals with
Speaker 3: calcium or real bones in their body do.
Speaker 2: Who's got those two fossils? Where are they? That's a
Speaker 2: good question.
Speaker 3: One of them was just discovered and published by a
Speaker 3: group in Alberta. And then the other one, that's a
Speaker 3: good question. It's been quite a while since I read
Speaker 3: the paper, but they would be there, they'd.
Speaker 2: Be in museums, right. There's only two of them known. Well.
Speaker 2: I spent so long trying to find out where these
Speaker 2: two fossils are, and I can tell you that one
Speaker 2: was discovered in Mason Creek, Illinois, I think around nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, and the other is from Lebanon and was
Speaker 2: acquired in twenty thirteen by a private fossil collecting company.
Speaker 2: But I earnestly just spent probably two hours trying to
Speaker 2: figure out if I could just go on a road
Speaker 2: trip and see a hagfish fossil in person, And the
Speaker 2: lack of information on their whereabouts has led me to
Speaker 2: believe that they're both kept in a Subtrannean vault with
Speaker 2: the Holy Grail, or they're just like k in it
Speaker 2: like ballers in a timeshare with Bigfoot.
Speaker 3: So precious, Yeah, super precious, and like I was saying,
Speaker 3: very rare, right, But as we uncover more fossil beds,
Speaker 3: there are particular fossilization conditions that lend themselves preserving soft
Speaker 3: bodied animals better. I think there was just a big
Speaker 3: deposit found in China actually in the last couple of
Speaker 3: weeks that has a lot of soft bodied creatures, but
Speaker 3: I think it's more in the Yeah, it could be
Speaker 3: right in that three hundred and fifty million, four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty million year range.
Speaker 2: And going back a little bit less far than that.
Speaker 2: Your history when you were just a tiny tot Canadia,
Speaker 2: did you always love poking around lakes and forests? What
Speaker 2: was going on?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. My mom always used to say that
Speaker 3: she needed to distract me. She just said, she just
Speaker 3: says she saw something in that puddle, and I'd be
Speaker 3: pretty consumed for quite a while. Honestly, I don't think
Speaker 3: there's a time when I didn't like science in some way, right,
Speaker 3: Like I wanted microscopes when I was six, and you know,
Speaker 3: brought home every creepy crawley I could find and you know,
Speaker 3: actually I collected butterflies.
Speaker 2: My original plan as a child was to be an entomologist.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, yeah, so I collected, you know, large numbers
Speaker 3: of butterflies.
Speaker 2: From all over the world wherever we went. And then
Speaker 2: where did you flutter away from them and into hagfish tank?
Speaker 3: That would have been yeah, in university, and you know,
Speaker 3: I guess the opportunities to study tropical butterflies were limited
Speaker 3: in Canada. So yeah, that's sort of what happened. I
Speaker 3: think it was right around two thousand and seven. Yeah,
Speaker 3: through meeting Doug and getting introduced to hagfish and then
Speaker 3: started being brought into the fold as it was, into
Speaker 3: the into the world a hagfish, there's sort of no
Speaker 3: end of amazement. That's what's kept me here. That almost
Speaker 3: any question you can ask about hagfish there likely isn't
Speaker 3: a concrete answer.
Speaker 2: And so when Doug said, hey, come on back study
Speaker 2: some hagfish with me, what was your response to that? Oh?
Speaker 2: I think it took a bit of prodding.
Speaker 3: I think because I really did enjoy the Wildlife Research
Speaker 3: station and living out in the woods there. But you know,
Speaker 3: obviously we're sitting here in beautiful sunny southern California, which
Speaker 3: didn't hurt.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard a more Canadian sentence. I really did.
Speaker 3: Enjoy the Wildlife Research station and living out in the
Speaker 3: woods there.
Speaker 2: And Tim says he loves doing applied research on these critters,
Speaker 2: figuring out how to use the slime to inform human
Speaker 2: made alternatives. And his master's work was looking at how
Speaker 2: we can use these fifteen centimeter long threads that spring
Speaker 2: forth from the hagfish as a fiber source and get
Speaker 2: away from petrochemical base fibers like acrylic and nylon and polyester.
Speaker 2: So although he misses the wilderness, trading his parka for
Speaker 2: board shorts wasn't all that tough.
Speaker 3: So I think that my heart's always been into hagfish,
Speaker 3: so in some ways it maybe didn't take too much.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think that the right projects, the right
Speaker 3: people all sort of lend themselves to a good time
Speaker 3: in science.
Speaker 2: And so explain to me what the life of a
Speaker 2: hagfish is like, where are they living, what are they eating,
Speaker 2: who are they hanging out with? What's going on down there? Oh?
Speaker 3: I think we all wish we knew. So what we
Speaker 3: do know is that they're very sensitive to temperature and light. Right,
Speaker 3: So they're a deep sea specialist. They seek out cold water.
Speaker 3: There is maybe only one species that's found inside of
Speaker 3: one hundred meters of depth, so there is called the
Speaker 3: inshore hagfish, which is found in Japan. But other than that,
Speaker 3: they're all very deep sea. They feed on a variety
Speaker 3: of not only small tube worms and other invertebrates, but
Speaker 3: also scavenge large windfalls of whales and seals and sea
Speaker 3: lions and big fish that fall down into the ocean.
Speaker 4: Deep.
Speaker 2: That's deep, so sigde note remember the Toothology episode with
Speaker 2: Sarah McNulty about marine snow that's soft, steady underwater dusting
Speaker 2: of pooh and flesh chunks. While a dead whale is
Speaker 2: like a marine blizzard, and hagfish love a snow day.
Speaker 3: We know where, at least we think that they play
Speaker 3: an important role in that bottom composition turnover. Right, So
Speaker 3: when things do fall into the deep there's low oxygen,
Speaker 3: there are conditions that can lend themselves, preserving something.
Speaker 2: Like a whale for years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Right, low temperatures, low oxygen, So maybe the bacterial decos
Speaker 3: composition is not as prevalent like there would be bacterial decomposition,
Speaker 3: But I think there's a place for hagfish and actually
Speaker 3: cleaning up the bottom in that way and then spreading
Speaker 3: the nutrients around right, so as they feed, they'll obviously
Speaker 3: leave go back to their burrows or go back to
Speaker 3: where they're living and bring nutrients with them and essentially
Speaker 3: help spread nutrients in an otherwise very very desert like
Speaker 3: deep sea environment.
Speaker 2: Smell it, find it, munch it, poop it, spread it.
Speaker 2: We were looking in the tank and some of them
Speaker 2: are all coiled up. Some of them are just hanging
Speaker 2: out in a tube. What's their day to day life
Speaker 2: like in terms of what we know about where they live.
Speaker 3: Some have a tendency to be in more muddy sandy bottoms.
Speaker 3: Those ones, those species are typical burrowers. They'll actually live
Speaker 3: in burrows in the mud and typically sit there with
Speaker 3: just their nostril sticking out catching, you know, looking for
Speaker 3: whiffs of whale or seals. But the other ones do
Speaker 3: spend time on rocky bottoms, and I think those are
Speaker 3: the species that tend to coil up a bit more
Speaker 3: because they're just spending a lot more time on the
Speaker 3: surface as opposed to within the substrate. But Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: been interesting work as well showing that there's handedness that
Speaker 3: hagfish have handedness. They have a tendency to coil either
Speaker 3: right or left more than the other way right, so
Speaker 3: they have a preference I think in captivity. There's probably
Speaker 3: only maybe five or six common species for people to
Speaker 3: have in captivity. There are a number of species that
Speaker 3: do not do well at all, so they're really hard
Speaker 3: to keep in artificial environments essentially, I think partially because
Speaker 3: it's really hard to replicate the pressure that they're used
Speaker 3: to living in. We can replicate temperature and salinity and
Speaker 3: pH and all these other environmental parameters, but it's really
Speaker 3: hard to recreate being a mile below the surface of
Speaker 3: the ocean. And how are they making baby hagfish? Nobody knows. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so nobody has ever witnessed hagfish breeding.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And nobody has ever had hagfish successfully breed in captivity,
Speaker 3: even unseen to produce fertile eggs. So we have hagfish
Speaker 3: laying eggs in captivity all the time, but they're presumably
Speaker 3: unfertilized because they never develop.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is something that I'm really interested in
Speaker 3: as well, is that is their seasonality in the deep sea,
Speaker 3: even though it's dark and cold all year. Are they
Speaker 3: more attuned to those deep sea conditions And maybe since
Speaker 3: the difference in lunar phases, do they have a migration?
Speaker 3: Are they always in the same place all the time?
Speaker 3: And I think that they are moving throughout the season,
Speaker 3: But it's just not a lot is known about it
Speaker 3: because it's so hard to follow these things into the deep.
Speaker 3: A lot of the technology that's used for tracking fish
Speaker 3: and other stuff isn't at either the size scale that
Speaker 3: could be used in hagfish, or is just the fish
Speaker 3: need to come to the surface to get data pings
Speaker 3: and hagfish.
Speaker 2: Never will, right.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, they're really tough to follow, and we've got
Speaker 3: a new underwater video rig that we're going to use
Speaker 3: to try and at least peer into their lives a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: Would do you think that they would be following the
Speaker 2: whales in case a whale does bite the dust and
Speaker 2: falls down.
Speaker 3: I think whales are typically undergoing such large migrations that
Speaker 3: hagfish wouldn't be, say, following the herd type thing. I
Speaker 3: think their low metabolism it suits them well to possibly
Speaker 3: go a year or more without feed even in captivity,
Speaker 3: we typically only feed them every three to six months.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, they eat a lot when they eat, but
Speaker 3: they don't eat frequently.
Speaker 2: Wow. What do you feed them in captivity? They get
Speaker 2: a bit of a mixture.
Speaker 3: There's shrimp and squid and beef and sometimes other random
Speaker 3: large fish that we come across in our work. I
Speaker 3: think we fed them in Opa, which is a very
Speaker 3: interesting interesting fish.
Speaker 2: Okay, so quick aside researching Opa. Opah got a lot
Speaker 2: of hits on Oprah. It's a different thing. And Opa
Speaker 2: is a big, silvery round fish. It's also called a
Speaker 2: moonfish looks like a moon and an Opa are one
Speaker 2: of the rare endothermic fishes, which means, like oprah, it
Speaker 2: has a warm heart.
Speaker 3: We feed them a diversity of stuff, hopefully trying to
Speaker 3: get them the right nutritional requirements they But again it's
Speaker 3: something that is not really well understood and something that
Speaker 3: we're looking to do more on is gathering gut contents
Speaker 3: from hagfish. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Would you just drop like a pot roast in the
Speaker 2: tank and they go nuts on it? Essentially? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What does that look like like it's a bit of
Speaker 3: a feeding frenzy. Yeah, that they're all going at it.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting as well though, because they lack appendages
Speaker 3: and they don't have a jaw. The way if it
Speaker 3: is to actually, like say, a big pot roast, they
Speaker 3: actually tie themselves into knots that they slide against the
Speaker 3: pot roast to actually tug on it.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, so they tie the same knots
Speaker 2: to rid themselves of slime. But they have a very.
Speaker 3: Unique way of actually latching onto something without jaws, right,
Speaker 3: so they.
Speaker 2: Can pull at it exactly and get like some resistance.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen a hagfish eating in a whale?
Speaker 3: Only in film? I've never seen it in real life.
Speaker 3: I would love to do.
Speaker 2: They go into the whale and then burrow out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are definitely spending a lot of time inside
Speaker 3: the whale. A recent study was published actually showing that
Speaker 3: they can absorb amino acids across their skin, right, so
Speaker 3: they you know, part of their low metabolism, their ability
Speaker 3: to deal with low oxygen. All of these unique adaptations
Speaker 3: really allow them to live that lifestyle.
Speaker 2: It's not a lifestyle choice, beella.
Speaker 3: And to go into a whale in which oxygen concentrations
Speaker 3: could be quite low. Bacterial levels high all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: They're perfectly at home, may feed there for months on.
Speaker 2: End, for months just gorging, and then be like am
Speaker 2: I and then go hang out for a year.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's so efficient. I have to say that's good
Speaker 2: for them. That it's like take on a lot of
Speaker 2: cargo and then just kick it for a bit.
Speaker 3: And I think we see that with anything that's withstood
Speaker 3: the test of one hundreds of millions of years, right,
Speaker 3: that they're typically generalists right there. You know, something like
Speaker 3: a crocodile, right can eat anything, can go months and
Speaker 3: months without eating, like they just there's certain life history
Speaker 3: characteristics that lend themselves to withstanding mass extinctions and all
Speaker 3: of the climatic changes that impact very niche specific species.
Speaker 2: Right. So, after this interview, Tim and I went and
Speaker 2: we ate tacos, and I realized later that despite flinging
Speaker 2: around wet loaves of hagfish mucus in the lab earlier,
Speaker 2: neither one of us washed our hands. But we also
Speaker 2: had a spirited discussion about the importance of a diverse microbiome,
Speaker 2: So I think we're on the same like so wet
Speaker 2: page there. Also at lunch, he mentioned that the hagfish
Speaker 2: traps are like buckets with a few conical ports that
Speaker 2: funnel the hagfish in so they can't get out. But
Speaker 2: what do they use to lure them into the bucket?
Speaker 2: Turns out hagfish love the smell of big mammal bones
Speaker 2: and fat, So they toss a fleshy beef bone in there,
Speaker 2: and I was like, do they get to eat it?
Speaker 2: And He's like, nah, that would mess up their gut
Speaker 2: content data. So the beef bones are in a mesh bag,
Speaker 2: meaning that the hagfish smell it, find it, but can't
Speaker 2: munch it, poop it, or spread it. The hagfish have
Speaker 2: been catfished, and they tend to eat the bigger things,
Speaker 2: Like if a whale sea lion is that kind of
Speaker 2: what their bread and butter is is. Oh man, there's
Speaker 2: a big whale. It's big and dead floating down here. Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: What's happening? Yeah? I think.
Speaker 3: That's the real train of thought that we're on is
Speaker 3: essentially that a lot of their features, a lot of
Speaker 3: their adaptations, would lend themselves to really capitalizing on those
Speaker 3: big whale falls or big mammal falls. They have very
Speaker 3: low metabolisms. If you compared them to a vertebrate, they'd
Speaker 3: have one of the lowest metabolisms of any vertebrate really, right,
Speaker 3: So yeah, they they live slow. So there's that, right,
Speaker 3: there's you know, we've observed them absolutely gorging at these.
Speaker 2: Deep sea sites, right, so they just you know, they.
Speaker 3: Fill their guts to the point that there may be
Speaker 3: many times their original mass. Well, I was hungry, So
Speaker 3: to be able to do that as well makes you
Speaker 3: think that this is that's the predominantly what they're doing.
Speaker 3: But we also see that they do feed on some
Speaker 3: sort of tube worms and these other invertebrates that are
Speaker 3: found in the sediment in which the haggfish live.
Speaker 2: So, and can you run me through some body parts
Speaker 2: of a hag fish?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess if you're to have a hagfish
Speaker 3: out on the table. They they do have a head, right,
Speaker 3: So they have barbles at the end of the head,
Speaker 3: which are essential they're chemical sensing devices, right they have
Speaker 3: the catfish, Yeah, catfish have barbles as well, right, So yeah,
Speaker 3: they'd be packed with what we call chemosensory cells that
Speaker 3: would be picking up things like the sense of dead
Speaker 3: or decaying fish, right or a whale. So they start
Speaker 3: with those. They have a very large intake aperture for
Speaker 3: their gill system.
Speaker 2: So seawater gets snorgled through their face snoop, and then
Speaker 2: that water is expelled through these breathing holes on the side,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of like a slimy water flute that
Speaker 2: someone sewed from a dee boned baby. Anyway, they smell
Speaker 2: like champs.
Speaker 3: It also feeds into a sack right very close to
Speaker 3: their brain, so they have probably an incredible ability to
Speaker 3: detect very saint or very faint smells, which makes sense,
Speaker 3: right if they're potentially hundreds of meters from something that fell,
Speaker 3: or maybe even further right, So, they have very primitive eyes.
Speaker 3: If you look at a lot of the hagfish, they
Speaker 3: don't have the type of eyes that we would normally
Speaker 3: associate with a fish. Theirs actually don't even protrude through
Speaker 3: the skin, So there's a transparent layer of skin that
Speaker 3: covers a very rudimentary eye that was likely more developed
Speaker 3: at one time but was just not selected for and
Speaker 3: they essentially lost its full functionality.
Speaker 2: So eyes we're off that had them lost them baller, Now,
Speaker 2: what is happening with that mouth? First of all, it
Speaker 2: has these whisky flesh dangles that look kind of like
Speaker 2: a tiny handlebar mustache made out of little dix. But
Speaker 2: don't go looking for jaws here, no, no, sir. They
Speaker 2: have what Tim calls a muscular appendage inside their mouth,
Speaker 2: and it juts out this little paddle of hard, jagged spikes,
Speaker 2: kind of like a snail's tongue. So imagine if your
Speaker 2: tongue had rows and rows of those things in parking
Speaker 2: lots that'll pop your tires if you drive the wrong
Speaker 2: way on them. So, yeah, hagfish, they deserve our respect.
Speaker 3: So essentially there are these caratinous teeth or the same
Speaker 3: you know, the same material that makes up our fingernails
Speaker 3: makes up their their rasp, which they use to actually
Speaker 3: essentially sand tissue off of a carcass or to slurp
Speaker 3: up a little worm that they're after. But then when
Speaker 3: you look at the rest of them, they vary a
Speaker 3: little bit in terms of their gill apertures that water
Speaker 3: flows out of. The more burrowing specialist hagfish will have
Speaker 3: reduced numbers of gill openings in which the water flows out.
Speaker 2: Of again water flute. Now, all of this is just
Speaker 2: the tater skins, the jalapeno poppers appetizers before we get
Speaker 2: to the main course, because here here's where things get slimy. Now,
Speaker 2: if you've listened to previous episodes of Ologies or the
Speaker 2: first twelve seconds of this one, you know I don't
Speaker 2: censor language. The fuck is a hagfish. Most science podcasts
Speaker 2: bleep out questionable swear words, but I embrace raw emotion
Speaker 2: and freedom of adult expression in science communication in this podcast,
Speaker 2: at least with the exception of the word mucus it's
Speaker 2: too gross. It comes up between ten to fifteen times
Speaker 2: and the remainder of this episode, So when you hear
Speaker 2: a faint chime, please know it's just replacing the word mucus.
Speaker 2: Please feel free take a glug of your beverage in
Speaker 2: front of you, do a tiny, imperceptible butt dance to
Speaker 2: celebrate the absence of this word.
Speaker 3: And then as you move into the rest of the body,
Speaker 3: you'll notice along the ventral side that they have about
Speaker 3: one hundred to one hundred and fifty slime gland openings right,
Speaker 3: so they're literally covered head to tail with these glands
Speaker 3: that produce their defa slime. So whether they're bit on
Speaker 3: the head or on the tail. They can in a
Speaker 3: fraction of a second, like less than one hundred milliseconds,
Speaker 3: produce copious quantities of this fiber reinforced slime.
Speaker 2: Which is astounding. It's astounding like for something that is
Speaker 2: maybe not as advanced as some other vertebrates. This is
Speaker 2: a defense system that is still very much mysterious in
Speaker 2: terms of how it works, right.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, So if everything else about the hagfish
Speaker 3: we would call primitive, this is highly derived, right. This
Speaker 3: is unlike anything else found in nature. We know of
Speaker 3: a lot of mucuses, we know of a lot of
Speaker 3: natural fiber sources like silkworm silks or spider silks, But
Speaker 3: hagfish threads that are found in their slime are not
Speaker 3: only comparative to spider silks and in terms of their
Speaker 3: mechanical properties that they're incredibly tough, but they produce this
Speaker 3: stuff in prodigious quantities.
Speaker 2: This cannot be overstated.
Speaker 3: Like an individual hagfish may have twenty thousand kilometers of
Speaker 3: fiber in its body at any one time. And what's
Speaker 3: so unique about these fibers is that they're packaged into
Speaker 3: fifteen centimeter fiber lengths, but that's coiled into one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty micron cell, so like a little bit more
Speaker 3: than a tenth of a millimeter. They pack fifteen centimeters
Speaker 3: of thread into.
Speaker 2: So to put that in perspective, the threads that make
Speaker 2: up this water trapping slime network are ten million times
Speaker 2: longer than they are wide, and they are somehow neatly
Speaker 2: coiled like a skin of yarn into a tiny cell capsule,
Speaker 2: ready to be ejected and unfurled. Now, more on how
Speaker 2: that works in a minute. But ad minute, you love hagfish?
Speaker 2: How are they coiling this? What is their gooey witchcraft?
Speaker 2: You're intrigued?
Speaker 3: So that process in and of itself has been something
Speaker 3: that has really intrigued us for quite some time.
Speaker 2: And is it hard for them to make more of it?
Speaker 2: If they slime someone and they're like bye bye, Laida,
Speaker 2: do they have to go sit and produce more? Is
Speaker 2: it energy expensive for them? Yeah?
Speaker 3: The fibers are made up of protein, which in general
Speaker 3: is quite expensive to make. But one of the unique
Speaker 3: things that the hagfish does by having so many slime
Speaker 3: glands is that it never deploys them all at once, right,
Speaker 3: So they do have some sight specificity. Right, If you
Speaker 3: bite it on the tail, it may only release exitate,
Speaker 3: is what we call the condensed slime. Essentially, it may
Speaker 3: only release a few glands worth, like two or three
Speaker 3: glands on either side of its body, which is enough
Speaker 3: to preduce use a gallon of form slime. So like,
Speaker 3: they would never be caught without slime. Ever, they just
Speaker 3: have so much on board, And there's some indication as
Speaker 3: well that they can't actually release all of the slime
Speaker 3: from a single gland because they likely retain the immature
Speaker 3: cell components which would otherwise maybe be released but not
Speaker 3: function as they should.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens when these fibers hit water?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's something that's really interesting to us. So
Speaker 3: it's a two component slime. It's released by what's called
Speaker 3: holocrimes secretion, which means that the cells are actually having
Speaker 3: their membrane stripped off of them as they pass through
Speaker 3: the pore of the slime gland.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Right, So it narrows down to a tiny opening that
Speaker 3: strips the cells of their membranes. So when they're released
Speaker 3: to seawater, they're exposed to an entirely new environment. Right, water,
Speaker 3: there's an interaction with the seawater. There's essentially the solubilization
Speaker 3: of proteins that help maintain these fibers in their coiled
Speaker 3: up state. But what happens is that the seawater very
Speaker 3: rapidly bursts the vesicles that are released. They shear out
Speaker 3: into these long strands, which essentially transmit forces of mixing
Speaker 3: down to the thread bundles.
Speaker 2: So instant replay. The hagfish takes the offense defense ejects
Speaker 2: tiny coiled balls of the exitit, getting their little membrane
Speaker 2: covers stripped. As a exit, the threads hit the water
Speaker 2: at xpand trapping more water in a net of microfiber
Speaker 2: threads expanding ten thousand times its size. Slime predator offense
Speaker 2: retreats down for the count. Hagfish remains the champion of
Speaker 2: the deep or in timswords.
Speaker 3: To simplify what I just said, I guess the mix
Speaker 3: least really vigorous mixing that's created by either the hagfish
Speaker 3: trying to escape or the predator trying to eat. The
Speaker 3: hagfish further expands this network of fiber until it forms
Speaker 3: this fully formed slime ball, which is capable of fully
Speaker 3: clogging the gills of a ten foot shark. Right We've
Speaker 3: never seen a successful predation on a hagfish by any
Speaker 3: gill breathing predator.
Speaker 2: So we see sea.
Speaker 3: Lions, birds, porpoises, all successful hagfish predators because they're breathing
Speaker 3: mechanisms are separated from their eating mechanism essentially just like us,
Speaker 3: right like we can breathe and eat at the same time,
Speaker 3: whereas most gill breathing fish can't. They're breathing all the time,
Speaker 3: and that is what exposes them to the slime.
Speaker 2: So you got gills, you get screwed, and so that
Speaker 2: slime will just clog their actual respiration exactly like I'm.
Speaker 3: Out, the water flow from going across their gills. And
Speaker 3: we actually don't know what happens to them, because all
Speaker 3: of the video work that's been done has happened with wild,
Speaker 3: free living animals. When the sharks or the fish get slimed,
Speaker 3: they quickly leave the video frame, and we actually don't
Speaker 3: know whether they actually die or whether any of these
Speaker 3: animals can get the slime off their gills. It just
Speaker 3: gets wrapped around everything. With the thousands of you know,
Speaker 3: with miles and miles of fiber, it's very easy for
Speaker 3: it to just get wrapped around things and stay there man.
Speaker 2: And so how much of this slime is actually water
Speaker 2: and how much is the fiber protein.
Speaker 3: So when the exit it's released into seawater and fully
Speaker 3: sets up, it's over ninety nine percent seawater. So essentially,
Speaker 3: hagfish slime can be formed in any container. It'll conform
Speaker 3: to the shape of almost anything. We did at that
Speaker 3: showed that it's actually one of the softest materials known
Speaker 3: to man. It's very deformable.
Speaker 2: So side note. This study was Concentration independent Mechanics and
Speaker 2: Structure of hagfish Slime, and one of the paper's authors,
Speaker 2: Randy Ilwalt, told the Atlantics at Yong that hagfish slime
Speaker 2: is one of the softest materials ever measured, and quote,
Speaker 2: jello is between ten thousand and one hundred thousand times
Speaker 2: stiffer than hagfish slime. I have touched it and it
Speaker 2: is some soft, silky business. And then I went and
Speaker 2: touched nachos because I'm ten thousand times tougher than purel apparently.
Speaker 2: But when it's put into elongational flow or stretched, that's
Speaker 2: when the fibers and their reinforcement properties start to be felt,
Speaker 2: because they're actually incredibly strong when you stretch them. What
Speaker 2: do you think are some applications of hagfish slime? Are
Speaker 2: people looking at this being like? I think so it's
Speaker 2: such a unique mechanism. I think, first of all, this.
Speaker 3: Speed with which this slime sets up interests people because
Speaker 3: whatever is happening, and we've been trying to figure this
Speaker 3: out for years, happens so quickly that it's likely one
Speaker 3: of the fastest reactions that we know of. It's so
Speaker 3: incredibly fast that I think how we could learn how
Speaker 3: to not only maybe bundle things, but unbundle or uncoil things,
Speaker 3: and also how we develop rapidly expanding gel networks would
Speaker 3: be an interesting application.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The fibers themselves, I've always been interested in actually using
Speaker 3: for textile Right, They're very, very fine. They're a micron
Speaker 3: in diameter. So even when you think of microfiber clothing,
Speaker 3: which is so soft, that stuff's like thirty to fifty
Speaker 3: micrones in diameter, so it's much finer.
Speaker 2: So let's get some scale for microns real quick. A
Speaker 2: micron is one millionth of a meter, and a human
Speaker 2: hair is around fifty to one hundred microns in diameter.
Speaker 2: A red blood cell is five microns across. The human
Speaker 2: eye can't see much smaller than around forty microns, So yes,
Speaker 2: hagfish silk would be luxurious as hell. It'd probably make
Speaker 2: the softest T shirt. Well, would you have to do
Speaker 2: to get it from a like a puddle of two
Speaker 2: like a loom? Would you have to dry it out?
Speaker 3: I think that you'd probably want to isolate the thread
Speaker 3: bundles and then work with them on their own. But
Speaker 3: I think the biggest challenge right now is that it
Speaker 3: is such a narrow fiber that any of the equipment
Speaker 3: that's used right now to spin textiles is not built
Speaker 3: at a scale that could handle it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now there's a PI shirt that went around
Speaker 2: the internet that made everyone question what the deal was
Speaker 2: with hagfish. This photo of a car that got into
Speaker 2: an accident and it was carrying a ton of hagfish
Speaker 2: and there was slime everywhere. Yeah, it is all around us.
Speaker 2: Can you give me any backstory or any any thoughts
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: Well, there is a commercial hagfish fishery, So hagfish are
Speaker 3: used as food products in places like Korea. They're eaten,
Speaker 3: but also for quite a few years their skin was
Speaker 3: used to make eel skin leather products, so if anybody
Speaker 3: has something that's called eel skin leather, it's actually probably hagfish.
Speaker 2: So they made.
Speaker 3: Belts and wallets and handbags and still do to this day.
Speaker 3: So it's likely that that transport had a bunch of
Speaker 3: hagfish that were going to market and when it got
Speaker 3: into the accident, it stressed the hagfish out and they
Speaker 3: started producing.
Speaker 2: So this happened on the coast of Oregon near Depot Bay,
Speaker 2: and the photos are bananas. It looks like these giant
Speaker 2: earthworms covered in silvery ectoplasm on a two lane highway,
Speaker 2: covering the whole thing. They're slithering toward the gutter. A
Speaker 2: four car pile up looks like a giant sneezed on it.
Speaker 2: There are bulldozers scooping up slime eels as they're called
Speaker 2: by the hundreds. They're hosing off the road with apparently
Speaker 2: five thousand gallons of water and then just letting them
Speaker 2: die there on the shoulder. And hagfish, quite frankly, deserve
Speaker 2: more respect. The local CBS affiliate was on the scene,
Speaker 2: could have no choice for to get out, and I
Speaker 2: was walking in it.
Speaker 3: It was ugly and Aaron Butler had a near miss
Speaker 3: with all that fish.
Speaker 4: On the ground.
Speaker 3: It was still moving, I mean it was there was
Speaker 3: liquid eels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hagfish. Yeah. Can you imagine if we did that
Speaker 2: when we were just stressed out, like I'm having a
Speaker 2: day guys, Yeah, just covered. Is there a difference between slime, Well,
Speaker 2: I think that's a good question.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how much slime is maybe a technical term, right,
Speaker 3: I think that maybe all slimes have you know, but
Speaker 3: maybe not all their slimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, like with hagfish slime, maybe we call it
Speaker 3: a slime because it's a two part system, whereas.
Speaker 2: Something like a snail.
Speaker 3: That leaves a trail it's really just okay, maybe that's
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 2: But I guess you call it snail slime too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look at it. I'm going to figure that out. Yeah, sure, okay.
Speaker 2: I looked into this distinction, and the M word is
Speaker 2: made by membranes and slime is derived from the root
Speaker 2: word for sticky mud or marsh. But it now also
Speaker 2: means thing, you know what I mean, So different routes,
Speaker 2: but technically now interchangeable terms. So just in case you
Speaker 2: need that information in your everyday life, your day to
Speaker 2: day work with hagfish. What does it involve? What are
Speaker 2: you looking at? What's the process?
Speaker 3: Well, my work right now is looking at whether or
Speaker 3: not hagfish slime can be used to essentially block the
Speaker 3: flow of water around different objects, right, so, you know,
Speaker 3: a boat propeller or a great system, or how we
Speaker 3: can use its natural tendency to clog and reduce water
Speaker 3: flow in ways that we can essentially harness it as
Speaker 3: a useful thing for people. One idea might be that
Speaker 3: maybe you can mix it into an oil slick and
Speaker 3: bind the water and the oil into it and then
Speaker 3: remove it that way, right, Like, that's not something we're
Speaker 3: currently working on, but I always had that interest and
Speaker 3: that it mops up water so well that I'd be
Speaker 3: interested to see what it could do, you know, with
Speaker 3: potential contamination and waterways and other things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How do you think hagfish are portrayed in the media.
Speaker 3: I think people love to hate them, I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is sort of sad to me as well. I
Speaker 3: think that, like anything in the ocean, it's not on
Speaker 3: our radar a lot, right, So once we move off
Speaker 3: of land into the sea, it's quite literally another world,
Speaker 3: and when you move from the shallow seas into the
Speaker 3: deep sea, it's like outer space, right. So I think
Speaker 3: that you know, as humans, we tend to look at
Speaker 3: things that have features that are similar to ours, Right,
Speaker 3: If they have big eyes, they're cute, you know, we
Speaker 3: look for those features, and I think hagfish pretty much
Speaker 3: lack everything that we can associate with, so that probably
Speaker 3: lends it to like, you know, seeming like an ugly
Speaker 3: worm like eel like creature. But I'd say that the
Speaker 3: more you work with them, the cuter they become, and
Speaker 3: you know, your respect level definitely goes up.
Speaker 2: Do you have favorite hagfish in the tank? Are you like,
Speaker 2: what's up, buddy?
Speaker 3: I think so, yeah, Like they do have They do
Speaker 3: have different skin features just like we do, that you
Speaker 3: can use to identify individuals. And I also think that
Speaker 3: they have personality, right that some are naturally more relaxed
Speaker 3: than others, and depending on what you're wanting to do
Speaker 3: with them, you know, a relaxed tagfish can be a
Speaker 3: good hagfish.
Speaker 2: I wonder if the other hagfish, You're like, why does
Speaker 2: he always get picked? And He's like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: I'm just cool. To cool to kick it. Just an update.
Speaker 2: My new life motto is a relaxed tagfish can be
Speaker 2: a good hagfish. Also, Tim says hagfish do have a
Speaker 2: reason to be uptight. Scientists aren't sure what effect overfishing
Speaker 2: or rising ocean temperatures will have on their populations. Plastic is,
Speaker 2: of course another issue. Tim says, we all know it's
Speaker 2: on the surfaces of the ocean, but he wonders where
Speaker 2: it's ending up in the deep sea as well, and
Speaker 2: what organisms are ingesting it and what that'll mean for
Speaker 2: the future of the hagfish. And he's about to embark
Speaker 2: on an expedition to the Galapagos. He's great at trapping
Speaker 2: and is tinkering with new observation cameras to deploy. Folks
Speaker 2: on his research team referred to him as the hagfish Wrangler.
Speaker 2: How deep are you able to do research?
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the limitations are because you have,
Speaker 3: like say, if we're dropping traps, you typically will have
Speaker 3: a rope that has to go the whole depth, right,
Speaker 3: So if you're in four thousand feet, you need such
Speaker 3: a huge amount of rope to get down there that
Speaker 3: it limits say how many traps you can have down
Speaker 3: at once. So we're experimenting with some lineless trapping methods
Speaker 3: that actually use corrosible links that are made of magnesium
Speaker 3: that corode and seawater at a known rate, so that
Speaker 3: you can drop traps and end our camera equipment into say,
Speaker 3: you know, like six thousand feet of water and have
Speaker 3: them float back to the surface once the link corrodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there are some really unique deep sea technologies that
Speaker 3: are making this stuff possible now that maybe wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is all start. It's just ramping up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: such an exciting field of research. I feel like so
Speaker 2: many eyes are on hagfish to be like, what is
Speaker 2: happening with hagfish? Where is the slime coming from? How
Speaker 2: have they lived for so long? So quick check in.
Speaker 2: I searched hagfish myths and I did see the Google
Speaker 2: auto filled with the most frequent questions asked, which included
Speaker 2: are hagfish poisonous? What? No? Can a hagfish bite a human? No,
Speaker 2: they don't even have a jaw. However, if you wound
Speaker 2: up on the ocean floor not alive, it might smell you,
Speaker 2: find you munch you poop you spread you but at
Speaker 2: that point you would have way bigger problems than the hagfish. Now.
Speaker 2: I kept searching for more flimflam, and I found that
Speaker 2: in Korea, hagfish is an afrodisiac and a fertility food.
Speaker 2: Its shape might have something to do with that. I
Speaker 2: also came upon a Smithsonian article that said, according to
Speaker 2: common hagfish mythology, they can fill a five gallon bucket
Speaker 2: with the stuff in mere minutes. And that is a
Speaker 2: myth because people it takes seconds and it could fill
Speaker 2: a barrel. Is there any flim flam about hagfish that
Speaker 2: you would want to debunk? Any myths that you feel
Speaker 2: like need to, Oh, hagfish myths you should throw in
Speaker 2: my way? What have you heard? What are they up to? Oh?
Speaker 2: I haven't heard. I haven't heard a lot of faulty
Speaker 2: gossip about a hagfish. Yeah, maybe that they're I mean,
Speaker 2: they're opportunists, but that's the beauty of them. But do
Speaker 2: you think anyone do you think people are grossed out
Speaker 2: by them because of the factor.
Speaker 3: Or oh I think so okay, Yeah, I would say
Speaker 3: that really grosses people out. But the reality is, like
Speaker 3: in the slime itself. It's not sticky, it's not toxic,
Speaker 3: it's you know, like it's actually really fun to play
Speaker 3: with it is. I would say that, you know, and
Speaker 3: I would I would challenge anyone to meet a hagfish
Speaker 3: and to see their slime and not be as intrigued
Speaker 3: as I am. Right, it's you literally are sometimes left
Speaker 3: speechless and and in wonder.
Speaker 2: Yes, have you ever seen any hagfish in a movie
Speaker 2: or TV show?
Speaker 3: I think there have been some hagfish cartoons. There was
Speaker 3: a band called Hagfish. Really, it's like a punk punk
Speaker 3: band called Hagfish.
Speaker 2: What did you think of them? I've never listened to them.
Speaker 2: I should. You're gonna come up on their Google alert.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like, oh man, that's about the fish again. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The band Hagfish emerged in nineteen ninety one, broke up
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one, and had an energetic neopunk
Speaker 2: style descended from the Descendants Now. One of their most
Speaker 2: revered studio albums is called Rocks Your Lame Ass, and,
Speaker 2: according to music journalist Tricksy Delight, their name itself means
Speaker 2: nothing to the band personally. It was simply chosen randomly
Speaker 2: from a Dictionary. Here's what they sound like. PS. They
Speaker 2: wore suits and had sideburns and opened for the Reverend
Speaker 2: Horton Heat and made a few other albums. So hagfish
Speaker 2: kind of made it big. But how big can hagfish
Speaker 2: make it?
Speaker 3: You know, we're already seeing like some of these hagfish
Speaker 3: are four to six feet long. Others are absolutely tiny, like,
Speaker 3: you know, ten centimeters. I'm sorry, I keep jumping between
Speaker 3: the two systems.
Speaker 2: Fun and you and we just don't know how old
Speaker 2: they get, no, because nothing calcifies theer's no to there's
Speaker 2: such a mystery.
Speaker 3: And so that's one of those things that a lot
Speaker 3: of fish are indeterminate growers, right, Like they technically have
Speaker 3: the potential to grow forever, right but in the deep sea,
Speaker 3: especially with such a strong defense mechanism like this line
Speaker 3: that they have, you know, yeah, they could they could
Speaker 3: live decades, They could live over one hundred years. Who knows.
Speaker 2: They're such quiet badasses. Yeah, that's what I love about them.
Speaker 2: We're just like, oh, I'm sorry, did you want to
Speaker 2: mess with me? Because it's just like, damn hagfitch. Can
Speaker 2: I ask you Patreon questions? Yes, for sure? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I got a lot of questions from listeners. That's good, Okay,
Speaker 2: So before we get to Patreon questions, a few words
Speaker 2: from sponsors at the show. They make it possible for
Speaker 2: me to give a donation each week to a charity
Speaker 2: of the ologists choosing, and this week Tim asked that
Speaker 2: it go to his Canadian woodsy science home away from home,
Speaker 2: the Wildlife Research Station. And since its inception in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four, the wild Life Research Station has been providing
Speaker 2: access and logistical support for university and government researchers. It's
Speaker 2: situated on Lake Saskatchewan in the Algonquin Provincial Park and
Speaker 2: operates as a non for profit organization. It's been instrumental
Speaker 2: in these really uniquely long running research projects on wildlife
Speaker 2: from flies to small mammals and turtles and birds and
Speaker 2: more so. A link to that nonprofit will be in
Speaker 2: the show notes and up at aliwar dot com slash
Speaker 2: ologies slash Hagfishology. Okay, some things I.
Speaker 1: Like imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
Speaker 1: get immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration and expertise,
Speaker 1: where you can lay in luxury accommodations and kids cam
Speaker 1: fees from ninety five sets. Tickets are free to everyone
Speaker 1: and include all the attractions you've just imagined a day
Speaker 1: out at the Kia Pikia the Wonderful every Day.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back now. The first question was also asked
Speaker 2: by patron Shaya Gadard. Sydney Brown wants to know where
Speaker 2: did hagfish get their name? And what's the biggest hagfish
Speaker 2: ever found? Oh, that's a good name. Are a good question.
Speaker 3: Sorry. In terms of the word hagfish, I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but obviously you know, if I were to take a
Speaker 3: more of a random gus at it, it has something
Speaker 3: to do with their looks.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm just going to go ahead and gas So
Speaker 2: side note. Patron Carla Kennedy asked, are we sure they
Speaker 2: were supposed to be named hag and not gagfish? Typos happen?
Speaker 2: Shrug emoji? Wow, wow Carla? Where is the respect for
Speaker 2: a slimy jallous sausage with a tiny dick mustache? And
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I made everyone wait this far to hear
Speaker 2: the etymology of hagfish. But okay, so the term was
Speaker 2: first recorded in sixteen eleven and it just comes from
Speaker 2: their face because they thought they were not cute. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the most obvious answer is insultingly the right one. But
Speaker 2: though hag means technically now a repulsive old woman, according
Speaker 2: to the Dictionary, that word is derived from the word
Speaker 2: for which, which, given the magic spell it can cast
Speaker 2: in the form of a phlegm. Neet isn't so off base.
Speaker 2: And the reason why that word meant which that became
Speaker 2: the word hag is because it came from a term
Speaker 2: for a hedge writer, as in a supernatural woman who
Speaker 2: rode the hedges between the safe, normal village and then
Speaker 2: the wild outer lands. So hagfish spellbinding, rule breaking, living
Speaker 2: in the darkness, and making alchemy of a whale carcass
Speaker 2: turning it into magic nutrient. Pooh. Now, on the topic
Speaker 2: of colology and how women are judged by toxic beauty standards,
Speaker 2: a few people include Amber and Jonathan Mead, as well
Speaker 2: as Kelsey lebou Frinch, Gina Martinez, Megan Metcalf, Jessica Beard,
Speaker 2: Amanda Blackburn, Hannah Leise, Kimberliefajaro, Katie Kelly Hanken, Dominica Deck,
Speaker 2: and Trent hop asked this next one, Amber and Jonathan
Speaker 2: Mead want to know are there any medical or cosmetic
Speaker 2: uses for hagfish slime.
Speaker 3: I think there's definitely an interest in the cosmetic field
Speaker 3: as well as in the medical field, in the sense
Speaker 3: that it can maybe be used as a biological filter,
Speaker 3: right that you know, if it blocks the flow of
Speaker 3: water and traps water, you can maybe use as an
Speaker 3: actual filter material. There's interest in using it as a
Speaker 3: food product as well as like an egg replacement. I've
Speaker 3: seen hagfish slime itself turn up in recipes really yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I.
Speaker 3: Think that there's people for a long time have been
Speaker 3: looking to use it for different things. I think partially
Speaker 3: what's limited it is the availability of hagfish, like they're
Speaker 3: just not super common on land, and as well that
Speaker 3: it's difficult to store the slime, right, so the way
Speaker 3: that the hagfish stores it inside of their glands is
Speaker 3: not really well understood. We know the chemicals that are there,
Speaker 3: we know sort of the environmental conditions inside the gland,
Speaker 3: but how they function is not really well known and
Speaker 3: we've had a hard time replicating it. So I think
Speaker 3: that's another one of the challenges to mainstream use of
Speaker 3: hagfish material is that you need to be able to maintain.
Speaker 3: It's really charismatic properties over time.
Speaker 2: You're one of the.
Speaker 4: Most charismatic people I've ever met, right, And we see
Speaker 4: that it's reactivity to see water, it's the rate at
Speaker 4: which it responds, and everything changes as we store it.
Speaker 2: Oh so, yeah, what happens if you have a mason
Speaker 2: jar forul a hagfish line?
Speaker 3: It eventually if it's in water, it will collapse. The
Speaker 3: network does collapse down, and it essentially will somewhat dissolve away.
Speaker 3: The component is dissolvable. But we've never followed it over
Speaker 3: really long periods like days or weeks. Typically for most
Speaker 3: of our work, we're interested in the really really short
Speaker 3: timescale stuff. If we were to use hagfish line for
Speaker 3: medical purposes or cosmetic or anything, we need to either
Speaker 3: figure out how to replicate it or how to store
Speaker 3: it in really meaningful ways.
Speaker 2: I feel like if you had a sheet mask that
Speaker 2: was just hagfish line, that would be hydrating as hell.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine just to just hagfish to lay on
Speaker 2: your face? Just like I mean, that's essentially what a
Speaker 2: sheet mask is. Colin Elijah wants to know where do
Speaker 2: they fall in the food chain? You know, do other
Speaker 2: animals want to even eat something that slimy? But yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you're a mammal, a sea mammal, you can
Speaker 2: chomp on it. Yeah, But where do they fall in
Speaker 2: the food chain?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say yeah, I wouldn't say that they
Speaker 3: form the bottom of the food chain, but I wouldn't
Speaker 3: say that they're necessarily the top either. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of really active predators even in the deep,
Speaker 3: Like there's big active shark species, there's big fish species
Speaker 3: that would probably be the dominant predator down there. But
Speaker 3: I think that because they have such a strong defense mechanism,
Speaker 3: which could also be viewed as sort of a competitive thing.
Speaker 3: So as they're feeding at a carcass, they do release
Speaker 3: bits of slime, right, And that's sort of one of
Speaker 3: my ideas too, is whether or not they actually use
Speaker 3: it to compete around a carcass. Right, So hagfish can
Speaker 3: all deal with the slime, but nothing else can, right.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in terms of where they fall, like they
Speaker 3: are preyed upon, but they're also a predator, So I
Speaker 3: think they're going to be somewhere.
Speaker 2: In the middle in terms of the you know, the
Speaker 2: zones of animals out there, Oh, I love that they're
Speaker 2: like hagfish party only. Okay, So chrisper asked this next one,
Speaker 2: but so did Jack Aman and Iron, Lannie Bauer, Sonya Karpelovich,
Speaker 2: Bonnie Joyce, Amelia Blakeman, Kitty Halberson, Von Spedsen, Zoe Jane
Speaker 2: Haley Everson, Erica ho Honkah, Danny Q, and Selina. They
Speaker 2: all ask some form of this hungry question. Chris Burer
Speaker 2: wants to know will hagfish sushi ever trend?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, hagfish are eaten in Korea and probably elsewhere
Speaker 3: in Southeast Asia. They're barbecued typically.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, have you ever eaten it? I have never
Speaker 2: eaten it.
Speaker 3: I think the more time you spend with stuff, the
Speaker 3: more you sense its distinct smell, and the more that
Speaker 3: it would probably taste like they smell.
Speaker 2: Okay. Eric Bahanca wants to know have you ever tried
Speaker 2: eating their slime?
Speaker 3: No? But I know people have and that it is
Speaker 3: a part of recipes egg replacement. But again, I don't
Speaker 3: think the slime would taste like much. It probably tastes
Speaker 3: like seawater.
Speaker 2: Seawater Does it do the same thing in fresh water
Speaker 2: less vigorously? Really?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So what is it about the salinity that activates those threads.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the things that we're trying to
Speaker 3: figure out, like whether it's active exchanges that go on
Speaker 3: with ions associated with the or the threads, whether it's
Speaker 3: a temperature related thing that the slime tends to set
Speaker 3: up better in cold water than warm water.
Speaker 2: So like, it's a fairly it's a fairly complex problem,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: So we've been going at it from a lot of
Speaker 3: different angles, and you know, we have a fairly good
Speaker 3: idea of the parameters that result in good slime formation,
Speaker 3: but the actual chemical.
Speaker 2: Basis for it all is still out there, which is
Speaker 2: so exciting. Is it exciting to be the forefront of
Speaker 2: this research? Super interesting.
Speaker 3: That's everything we do day to day, for the most part,
Speaker 3: has never been done, so that gets me excited.
Speaker 2: Okay, heads up, spoiler alert. This next question may deal
Speaker 2: with non Newtonian fluids. So I thought i'd drop a
Speaker 2: death here now, and I'm going to read this part
Speaker 2: right off of Wikipedia because I didn't want to get
Speaker 2: it wrong. But a non Newtonian fluid is a fluid
Speaker 2: that does not follow Newton's law of viscosity. It says,
Speaker 2: in non Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force
Speaker 2: to be either more liquid or it can be more solid.
Speaker 2: So ketchup, for example, becomes runnier when it's shaken. Thus,
Speaker 2: ketchup is a non Newtonian fluid. I just learned that
Speaker 2: right now. It also says custard, honey, toothpaste, paint, blood,
Speaker 2: and shampoo are all non Newtonian fluids. It also sounds
Speaker 2: like just a delicious smoothie. Just toss them all in
Speaker 2: a blender. Sarah wants to know. Is hagfish slime a
Speaker 2: solid or liquid? Is it a non Newtonian fluid?
Speaker 3: It is a non Newtonian fluid, really, so yeah, hagfish
Speaker 3: slime is composed. It does have solid components to it.
Speaker 3: But because it essentially we call it viscous entrapment, So
Speaker 3: hagfish lime doesn't bind to water at all, right, It
Speaker 3: essentially creates channels that are really narrow that work on
Speaker 3: the surface tension of water to trap it and slow
Speaker 3: its flow. Right, So it essentially slows water flow to
Speaker 3: a point that it creates the slime. But if you
Speaker 3: hold that slime out of water, all that water will
Speaker 3: drip out eventually. Wow, and you'll be laughed with nothing
Speaker 3: but a bit of fiber.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. So it's kind of like a really
Speaker 2: good net for water exactly right, which is sort of
Speaker 2: why earlier I say it'd be interesting to apply it to,
Speaker 2: you know, something like an.
Speaker 3: Oil spill and see how it worked at mopping up
Speaker 3: the water with the oil component in it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's so fascinating. Lara Taffer wants to
Speaker 2: know do hagfish have any close relatives to any land
Speaker 2: animals land animals?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Their closest relative that's still living
Speaker 3: is the lamp prey, right, So okay, yeah, so they're
Speaker 3: sort of grouped together with hagfish because they're a jawless
Speaker 3: creature that you know, primitive eel like body.
Speaker 2: But I think there's now, you know.
Speaker 3: The jury's out about whether or not hagfish actually started
Speaker 3: out much more vertebrate like and then lost those vertebrate
Speaker 3: like features.
Speaker 2: Wow. Right, So that what we're seeing.
Speaker 3: Is essentially something that it was more complex that actually
Speaker 3: somewhat simplified in time, So.
Speaker 2: They may have just gone on back.
Speaker 3: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Let's see. Suki Holly wants to know. Since hagfishes are
Speaker 2: creatures in the deep, did they get the bends when
Speaker 2: scientists bring them up to the lab to study.
Speaker 3: It's a super good question. So a lot of hagfish
Speaker 3: or sorry, a lot of fish have what's called an
Speaker 3: air bladder, which actually fills with air to provide buoyancy
Speaker 3: for them, so they can fill it and empty it
Speaker 3: to adjust how you know where they are in the
Speaker 3: water column. Hagfish don't have an air bladder, so when
Speaker 3: we bring them up, they're actually totally fine, right, So
Speaker 3: a lot of fish. Yeah, it's a good question because
Speaker 3: most fish that you would bring up from that depth,
Speaker 3: they're dead by the time they hit the surface because
Speaker 3: their swim bladder actually ruptures and like causes severe damage
Speaker 3: to fish itself. Hagfish don't have that problem, which is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons we can even study them, right,
Speaker 3: because we'd have a really hard time bringing them up.
Speaker 3: Hagfish have seemingly no problem coming to you ambient pressure
Speaker 3: at the surface.
Speaker 2: There's such slimy badasses. Yeah, I'm voning for hagfish for president.
Speaker 2: Is that weird? I'm like so in awe of them.
Speaker 2: I feel like hagfish is gonna absolutely save the world. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask one more question from a patron and
Speaker 2: then we'll wrap up. Travis Damella wants to know what
Speaker 2: are their social lives, like, do they relate to one another?
Speaker 2: And where do they sleep? I think that's another great question.
Speaker 2: So I think hagfish have a very vibrant social life.
Speaker 3: I got lots. I think that they We see them
Speaker 3: living in burrows together. We don't know about their relationship
Speaker 3: to each other, but they seem to like to pack together.
Speaker 3: They do like to be together in congregations. You know,
Speaker 3: where you find one hagfish, you find more. Right, So
Speaker 3: whether or not that has to do with the environment
Speaker 3: being really conducive to hagfish or whether or not they
Speaker 3: actually seek out a social group, we don't know. We're
Speaker 3: actually working on at least filming them in captivity to
Speaker 3: better understand how they interact with each other. You know,
Speaker 3: over the days and weeks of you know, circling around
Speaker 3: these tanks and with very limited hiding spots. Right, we
Speaker 3: provide them with habitat to hide in, but we're interested
Speaker 3: in how they maybe compete for that habitat, Like, are
Speaker 3: there dominant hagfish and subordinate hagfish or are they sort
Speaker 3: of devoid of that altogether, right, which is also a
Speaker 3: possibility that you know, the whole competition that we see
Speaker 3: in a lot of other animals maybe such an energy
Speaker 3: waster for a hagfish that they just don't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just maybe they don't care. Yeah, maybe he fish,
Speaker 2: you're friendly. So there is there a need for more
Speaker 2: hag phishologists.
Speaker 3: I think there's a need for a lot more people
Speaker 3: to study what's happening in the oceans.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's one of the you know, in many
Speaker 3: ways that Antarctica and space or these like crazy frontiers, right,
Speaker 3: I think the deep ocean is one of the last
Speaker 3: unexplored frontiers on the planet almost you know a lot
Speaker 3: of these missions that have gone down to video and
Speaker 3: find new species. Almost every time they deploy these ROVs
Speaker 3: or deep sea submersibles, they find new species. I know
Speaker 3: that we get very excited when undergraduates come into the
Speaker 3: lab and we get to introduce them to.
Speaker 2: Hagg fision, you know, spread the wonder for sure.
Speaker 3: But I think that it is one of those things
Speaker 3: that most biologists that ever come across them are permanently interested, right,
Speaker 3: they never lose their interests. And like we've seen this
Speaker 3: with people that are now in their nineties that love
Speaker 3: talking hagfish because they maybe worked with them for one year,
Speaker 3: you know, decades and decades and decades ago, but it
Speaker 3: was one of the most interesting things they ever did.
Speaker 2: You just get caught in a slimy web of love
Speaker 2: for hagfit. Yeah, all the puns.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Is there anything I always asked us at the very end,
Speaker 2: is there something about your job that sucks, something that
Speaker 2: frustrates you? What's the worst part about your job or hagfish? Oh?
Speaker 3: I think nothing wrong with the hagfish. But I think
Speaker 3: in terms of science in general, there's a lot of failure, right, Like,
Speaker 3: when you're doing projects, you're doing experiments in science, you
Speaker 3: never know what's right. You only ever find out what's
Speaker 3: likely wrong. Right, So I think that would be the
Speaker 3: most frustrating thing is that you have to you know,
Speaker 3: have pretty thick skin in a way, I guess to
Speaker 3: deal with, you know, especially going up against questions or
Speaker 3: developing experiments and apparatus that have maybe never been used
Speaker 3: or designed before. Right, Like, there's no hagfish one oh
Speaker 3: one book that we can really turn to to figure
Speaker 3: some stuff out, right, So you know, there's a good
Speaker 3: body of literature on hagfish. We do have what we
Speaker 3: consider the hagfish Bible, right, really what is it? It's
Speaker 3: called the Biology of Hagfish and there's been I think
Speaker 3: three iterations of it.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, you have like a copy in your glove compartment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got one here for you now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I texted him later and asked, what was the hagfish Bible,
Speaker 2: and he said, there are two. There's the Biology of
Speaker 2: Hagfish and Hagfish Biology. I hope the authors are friends.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's it, but I think that's part of
Speaker 3: the fun too. I'd say that the primary frustration is
Speaker 3: also the primary driver.
Speaker 2: Is your favorite thing about your job? What's your favoriteing
Speaker 2: about hagfish or your job or what you do? I
Speaker 2: think that's it's discovery.
Speaker 3: I think it's, like you're saying earlier, it's being on
Speaker 3: the forefront of something.
Speaker 2: It's being like literally looking into.
Speaker 3: The abyss, like how did natural selection act upon this?
Speaker 3: What does this mean in terms of how hagfish relate
Speaker 3: to each other? How did they relate to vertebrates and
Speaker 3: other fish? And I think that that's something that just
Speaker 3: keeps us endlessly intrigued because you know, there's more unanswered
Speaker 3: questions and answered questions. And I think that's good for
Speaker 3: any scientific field, right, Like you want to think you
Speaker 3: have a good idea of what's going on, but the
Speaker 3: more you know, the more you know.
Speaker 2: You don't know. And I think that's a good problem
Speaker 2: that scientists have. M and so that keeps you going
Speaker 2: a lot. Oh yeah, for sure. Oh great, Oh, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for doing this. I'm just so charmed
Speaker 2: by hagfish. It's awesome. So remember to ask smart people,
Speaker 2: real stupid and gross questions, because how else in the
Speaker 2: world would you discover that hagfishes are handsome drifters and
Speaker 2: seventeenth century witches who live in a timeshare with Bigfoot
Speaker 2: and the Holy Grail, and they help impotent men have
Speaker 2: long awaited children, and they deserve our respect. Some of
Speaker 2: those might not be true, but they are an inspiration
Speaker 2: for military defense. They could change the way we use fibers.
Speaker 2: They're pretty chill, and yes, they deserve our respect. Now,
Speaker 2: Tim Wengert is not on social media. God bless this
Speaker 2: Canadian hagfishologist, but you can google the Douglas Fudge Lab
Speaker 2: at Chapman University to learn more about what they're researching.
Speaker 2: So many great resources. We are ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: I'm Ali Ward with one l on both and more
Speaker 2: links from the show notes and they're up at aliward
Speaker 2: dot com slash ologies slash Hagfishology. You can get merch
Speaker 2: through that site or through ologies merch dot com. Thank
Speaker 2: you Shannon felt This and Bunnie Much for managing all that.
Speaker 2: Thank you Hannah Liippo and Aaron Tlbert for adminting the
Speaker 2: wonderful Facebook group. To interns Harry Kim and Caleb Patten,
Speaker 2: to Jared's Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for assistant editing,
Speaker 2: and of course to the mysterious slime Witch Stephen Ray Morris,
Speaker 2: who edits all the pieces together and also hosts the
Speaker 2: kiddie podcast The per Cast and the dino centric one
Speaker 2: see Jurassic Right and The theme song was written by
Speaker 2: Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. He also did the
Speaker 2: theme song for Serial Fun Trivia also before the Secret,
Speaker 2: I want to say a quick belated happy birthday to
Speaker 2: my dear friend Micah. Also happy birthday to Stephen Ray Morris,
Speaker 2: whose birthday is on Wednesday of this week. Happy birthday
Speaker 2: to Catherine Burns who has a birthday this week. Also
Speaker 2: to my niece Olivia. Happy birthday to boob Haver bra buyer,
Speaker 2: good friend Colleen whose birthday is this week. So many
Speaker 2: April birthdays. I love you all. If you stick around
Speaker 2: until the end of the episode, do you know I
Speaker 2: tell you a secret? And this one it's pretty straight forward,
Speaker 2: it's pretty topical. The reason that I took the lab
Speaker 2: tour and you didn't hear it is because there was
Speaker 2: one button that I accidentally pressed on my zoom and
Speaker 2: it switched over the mics so that the onboard mics
Speaker 2: weren't picking anything up, so it was just thirty two
Speaker 2: minutes of static boom. I'm sorry, bummer. Great episode anyway.
Speaker 2: Another secret is that I had a dream that I
Speaker 2: had a live stream and no one showed up to
Speaker 2: watch it, and I was wearing like dirty, grease spotted
Speaker 2: leggings that were made by Ferrari and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: these are my good leggings. I really messed these up. Anyway,
Speaker 2: no one watched my live stream and I thought, ward,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? Nobody wants this stuff? Anyway, I
Speaker 2: woke up and was like, well, at least Ferrari doesn't
Speaker 2: make leggings, okay for bye Pacodermatollege, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, teminology, meteorology, stology, anthology, ceriologyology.
Speaker 2: So these are actually hagfish nicknamed slime Eli get that
Speaker 2: nickname because you can see here they secrete slime whenever
Speaker 2: they runner stress, making the cleanup that much more difficult.