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Speaker 6: Oh it's your uncle's army buddy who makes superb banana bread,
Speaker 6: Ali Ward. I am back with another episode of Ologies
Speaker 6: Smologies rather what Assmologies. If you're listening to this and
Speaker 6: you're like, is this a regular episode of Ologies, it's not.
Speaker 6: We took full episodes of our regular Ologies podcast, Not
Speaker 6: Safe for Kids, and we whittled them down and we
Speaker 6: shaped them up to make these pocket sized, classroom friendly
Speaker 6: edits of some of your favorite past episodes. So if
Speaker 6: you haven't listened to the original full length episode of
Speaker 6: Hagfishology and you don't mind the occasional salacious detail and
Speaker 6: a lot of talk about muchus and swear words, go
Speaker 6: back listen to that one adults. That is in the
Speaker 6: link in the show notes. But if you have only
Speaker 6: about twenty or so minutes and you need a G
Speaker 6: rated version that's suitable for all ages, You're in the
Speaker 6: right place, stick around, okay. Hagfishology, I did not make
Speaker 6: that word out for this episode. I swear the term
Speaker 6: had been used before. In twenty thirteen, as part of
Speaker 6: a biology graduate student seminar, it was published. I found
Speaker 6: it and included a talk called Adventures in Hagfishology, Sulfate
Speaker 6: Transport and extra Branchial Mechanisms of ion regulation in Pacific
Speaker 6: Hagfish by Alex Clifford. So I did not make it up.
Speaker 6: The term hagfish itself, though, was first documented in sixteen eleven,
Speaker 6: and I wish it had a better story, but it
Speaker 6: just had to do with its face. Hagfish, plain and simple.
Speaker 6: So what is it though? What is a hagfish? Okay?
Speaker 6: So it's an eel shaped, jawless slime factory of a
Speaker 6: marine fish whose skin kind of fits like a loose sock.
Speaker 6: And hagfish have been classified as vertebrates that it here
Speaker 6: to have lost their spine what I know. Okay, but
Speaker 6: even that classification is not without a little controversy. But
Speaker 6: did I mention the slime? Oh, the slime? And you're
Speaker 6: probably wondering why I spent a whole episode on this
Speaker 6: grayish hot dog fish of the deep sea, and that
Speaker 6: is that's a fair question. I get it. Well, it's
Speaker 6: because I saw this news article in The Atlantic that
Speaker 6: profiled a traffic accident in twenty seventeen where a truck
Speaker 6: transporting seventy five hundred pounds of hagfish and their slime
Speaker 6: tipped over on an Oregon highway and blanketed both cars
Speaker 6: and the highway with this road slick that few people
Speaker 6: had ever experienced before. Hagfish slime ever since then has
Speaker 6: been front and center in my mind. I needed to
Speaker 6: know more, so I did a brief Google search for
Speaker 6: the world's foremost experts in hagfish and I met today's
Speaker 6: ologist So. He hails from Canada. He received his bachelor's
Speaker 6: and master's degrees in zoology from the University of Guelp
Speaker 6: in Ontario, where he was first introduced to hagfish by
Speaker 6: hagfish master doctor Douglas Fudge, and at the time of
Speaker 6: this interview he was a research associate at Chaplin University
Speaker 6: along with doctor Fudge, and in this episode, he helps
Speaker 6: us navigate what defines a craniate, why hagfish are deep
Speaker 6: sea specialists, they're barely functioning eyesight, but super sensitive snoots.
Speaker 6: How no one has seen a baby hagfish, they're infrequent
Speaker 6: dietary habits, and why hagfish intentionally tie themselves in knots,
Speaker 6: and of course all about the slime. So prepare U
Speaker 6: cranial cavities and notochords for a deep sea dwelling. Conversation
Speaker 6: with zoological enthusiast and professional hagfishologist Tim Wineguard. What is
Speaker 6: a hagfish for someone who's never seen or touched one?
Speaker 7: So I guess the best way to describe them is
Speaker 7: they're a benthic deep sea dweller. Right, So essentially all
Speaker 7: hagfish share that in common. They all live along the
Speaker 7: bottom substrate of the oceans, and the majority of them
Speaker 7: below one hundred meters in depth or about three hundred
Speaker 7: feet right.
Speaker 6: So side note this all just jumps between metric and
Speaker 6: us y are we still not metric measurements?
Speaker 7: So what they are is a jawless, primitive eel like creature.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: I'm hesitant to call them a fish, even though it's
Speaker 7: in their name, because they aren't necessarily a traditional fish.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: They lack scales, they lack jaws, they lack eyes, they
Speaker 7: lack what we would traditionally referred to as fins. So
Speaker 7: they're in many ways a very primitive version of a
Speaker 7: modern day fish.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: They're thought to have diverged at around the same time
Speaker 7: that vertebrates popped up on the evolutionary spectrum. So these
Speaker 7: augers are old old.
Speaker 5: My god, you're so old.
Speaker 6: Yeah, how many millions of years do you think?
Speaker 7: So there is fossil evidence up to three hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty million years, but they're likely over five hundred million
Speaker 7: years old.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So among some of the first like really highly
Speaker 7: organized cephalized, which means essentially like head focused creatures. So
Speaker 7: hagfish for a long time were defined as crane its,
Speaker 7: which means that they have a cranium surrounding their brain.
Speaker 7: But they have no calcification of anything their body, so
Speaker 7: it's all cartilage, right, So they do have a note accord.
Speaker 7: They have many of these features that are very vertebrate
Speaker 7: in a way, but lacking calcification, lacking gills, lacking jaws,
Speaker 7: all these other features place them in a much more
Speaker 7: and I even hesitate to say primitive, but I guess
Speaker 7: they are primitive features, even though hagfish themselves are obviously
Speaker 7: as ancient as they are, they're also very modern, right
Speaker 7: like the hagfish we see today. We really don't know
Speaker 7: how much they relate to the hagfish of the past.
Speaker 6: Right all right, So we have an idea of what
Speaker 6: they are, but I have so many questions as to
Speaker 6: their life and how they're socialized, and so explain to
Speaker 6: me what the life of a hagfish is like. Where
Speaker 6: are they living, what are they eating, who are they
Speaker 6: hanging out with? What's going on down there? Oh?
Speaker 7: I think we all wish we knew. So what we
Speaker 7: do know is that they're very sensitive to temperature and light, right,
Speaker 7: so they're a deep sea specialist. They seek out cold water.
Speaker 7: There is maybe only one species that's found inside of
Speaker 7: one hundred meters of depth, so there is called the
Speaker 7: inshore hagfish, which is found in Japan. But other than that,
Speaker 7: they're all very deep sea. They feed on a variety
Speaker 7: of not only small tube worms and other invertebrates, but
Speaker 7: also scavenge large windfalls of whales and seals and sea
Speaker 7: lions and big fish that fall down into the ocean.
Speaker 8: Deep.
Speaker 5: That's deep.
Speaker 6: Wow, that is quite the diet. But apparently they also
Speaker 6: play a role in keeping the deep sea ecosystem flourishing.
Speaker 7: Thanks we know, or at least we think that they
Speaker 7: play an important role in that bottom composition turnover. Right,
Speaker 7: So when things do fall into the deep there's low oxygen,
Speaker 7: there are conditions that can lend themselves preserving something like
Speaker 7: a whale for years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: Right, low temperatures, low oxygen. So maybe the bacterial decomposition
Speaker 7: is not as prevalent like there would be bacterial decomposition,
Speaker 7: But I think there's a place for hagfish and actually
Speaker 7: cleaning up the bottom in that way and then spreading
Speaker 7: the nutrients around. Right, So as they feed, they'll obviously
Speaker 7: leave go back to their burrows or go back to
Speaker 7: where they're living, and bring nutrients with them and essentially
Speaker 7: help spread nutrients in an otherwise very very desert like
Speaker 7: deep sea environment.
Speaker 6: Okay, so not just scavenging, but maybe even a nutrition
Speaker 6: regulator of the deep sea. Okay, But aside from eating
Speaker 6: scavenging keeping nutrients in check, what do hagfish do with
Speaker 6: their time? Do they have any hobbies? Do they knit
Speaker 6: tube sweaters for themselves? It seems so chilly down there.
Speaker 7: What's their day to day life like in terms of
Speaker 7: what we know about where they live. Some have a
Speaker 7: tendency to be in more muddy sandy bottoms. Those ones,
Speaker 7: those species are typical burrowers. They'll actually live in burrows
Speaker 7: in the mud and typically sit there with just their
Speaker 7: nostril sticking out catching, you know, looking for whiffs of
Speaker 7: whale or seals. But the other ones do spend time
Speaker 7: on rocky bottoms, and I think those are the species
Speaker 7: that tend to coil up a bit more because they're
Speaker 7: just spending a lot more time on the surface as
Speaker 7: opposed to within the substrate.
Speaker 9: And how are they making baby hagfish? Nobody knows. Yeah,
Speaker 9: so nobody has ever witnessed hagfish breeding. Wow, And nobody
Speaker 9: has ever had hagfish successfully breed in captivity, even unseen
Speaker 9: to produce fertile eggs. So we have hagfish laying eggs
Speaker 9: in captivity all the time, but they're presumably on fertilized
Speaker 9: because they never develop.
Speaker 6: No hagfish stork is doing a deep dive to deliver
Speaker 6: a slimy bundle of joy. So for now it just
Speaker 6: remains a mystery for us to ruminate on. By the way,
Speaker 6: ruminate means to chew on, which on that note back
Speaker 6: to their diets. How often do hagfish eat? Are they
Speaker 6: just swimming around the abyss in a constant search for snacks?
Speaker 6: Are there drive throughs down there? Swim throughs?
Speaker 7: I think their low metabolism, you know, it suits them
Speaker 7: well to possibly go a year or more without feeding.
Speaker 7: Even in captivity, we typically only feed them every three
Speaker 7: to six months. What yeah, yeah, they they eat a
Speaker 7: lot when they eat, but they don't eat frequently.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 6: What do you feed them in captivity?
Speaker 7: They get a bit of a mixture. There's shrimp and
Speaker 7: squid and beef. It's really interesting as well though, because
Speaker 7: they lack appendages and they don't have a jaw. The
Speaker 7: way if it is to actually, like, say, a big
Speaker 7: pot roast, they actually tie themselves into knots that they
Speaker 7: slide against the pot roast to actually tug on it.
Speaker 7: Oh my god. Yeah, so they tie the same knots
Speaker 7: to rid themselves of slime. But they have a very
Speaker 7: unique way of actually latching onto something without jaws, right,
Speaker 7: so they.
Speaker 6: Can pull at it exactly and get like some resistance. Okay,
Speaker 6: so we've learned that they don't have a proper job.
Speaker 6: But when they do eat in the wild at least
Speaker 6: they are down to yum it up on things like
Speaker 6: delicious ripe, decaying whales. You know how if you drop
Speaker 6: cheese on the floor, your dog rush is over to
Speaker 6: clean it up for you. Hagfish do that for the ocean.
Speaker 6: Only they bore a hole in something dead and they
Speaker 6: devour it from the inside out. Good for them, it's resourceful. Now,
Speaker 6: what are some of the other parts that make up
Speaker 6: these delightful creatures? And can you run me through some
Speaker 6: body parts of a hagfish?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I guess if you're to have a hagfish
Speaker 7: out on the table, they do have a head, right,
Speaker 7: So they have barbles at the end of the head,
Speaker 7: which are essentially their chemical sensing devices. Right they have
Speaker 7: the catfish, Yeah, catfish have barbles as well, right, so yeah,
Speaker 7: they'd be packed with what we call chemosensory cells that
Speaker 7: would be picking up things like the sense of dead
Speaker 7: or decaying fish, right or a whale. So they start
Speaker 7: with those. They have a very large intake aperture for
Speaker 7: their gill system.
Speaker 6: So seawater gets snorgled through their face snoop, and then
Speaker 6: that water is expelled through these breathing holes on the side,
Speaker 6: so they're kind of like a slimy water flute. Anyway,
Speaker 6: they smell like champs.
Speaker 7: It also feeds into a sack right very close to
Speaker 7: their brain, so they have probably an incredible ability to
Speaker 7: detect very or very faint smells, which makes sense, right
Speaker 7: if they're potentially hundreds of meters from something that fell,
Speaker 7: or maybe even further right, So, they have very primitive eyes.
Speaker 7: If you look at a lot of the hagfish, they
Speaker 7: don't have the type of eyes that we would normally
Speaker 7: associate with the fish. Theirs actually don't even protrude through
Speaker 7: the skin. So there's a transparent layer of skin that
Speaker 7: covers a very rudimentary eye that was likely more developed
Speaker 7: at one time but was just not selected for and
Speaker 7: they essentially lost its full functionality.
Speaker 6: Rudimentary eyes, but super super sensitive snoops got it. So
Speaker 6: they definitely have adapted to their environments over the last
Speaker 6: three hundred million years or so, they've had some time
Speaker 6: to work it out amazingly.
Speaker 7: So essentially there are these carratinous teeth or the same
Speaker 7: you know, the same material that makes up our fingernails
Speaker 7: makes up their their rasp, which they use to actually
Speaker 7: essentially sand tissue off of a carcass or to slurp
Speaker 7: up a little worm that they're after.
Speaker 6: But all of this hag anatomy is just the potato
Speaker 6: skins that jalapeno poppers appetizer before we get to the
Speaker 6: main course, because now it's time for slime, a lot
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 7: And then as you move into the rest of the body,
Speaker 7: you'll notice along the ventral side that they have about
Speaker 7: one hundred to one hundred and fifty slime gland openings right,
Speaker 7: so they're literally covered head to tail with these glands
Speaker 7: that produce their defensive slime. So whether they're bit on
Speaker 7: the head or on the tail, they can in a
Speaker 7: fraction of a second, like less than one hundred milliseconds,
Speaker 7: produce copious quantities of this fiber reinforced slime.
Speaker 6: And is it hard for them to make more of it?
Speaker 6: If they slime someone and they're like, bybee Laida, do
Speaker 6: they have to go to sit and produce more? Is
Speaker 6: it energy expensive for them?
Speaker 7: Yeah? The fibers are made up of protein, which in
Speaker 7: general is quite expensive to make. But one of the
Speaker 7: unique things that the hayfish does by having so many
Speaker 7: slime glands is that it never deploys them all at once, right,
Speaker 7: so they do have some sight specificity.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: If you bite it on the tail, it may only
Speaker 7: release exitate, is what we call the condensed slime. Essentially,
Speaker 7: it may only release a few glandsworth like two or
Speaker 7: three glands on either side of its body, which is
Speaker 7: enough to produce a gallon of form slime. So like
Speaker 7: they would never be caught without slime ever.
Speaker 6: Wow, amazing beautiful slime machines. The threads that make up
Speaker 6: this water trapping slime network are ten million times longer
Speaker 6: than they are wide, and they are somehow neatly coiled
Speaker 6: like a skin of yarn into a tiny cell capsule
Speaker 6: ready to be ejected and unfurl. I mean, admit it,
Speaker 6: you love hagfish. You love them now, don't you? Okay?
Speaker 6: But how big or how small can they get? Have
Speaker 6: they become bigger over time? Or have they gotten smaller
Speaker 6: in recent eras? Do they keep growing the older they get?
Speaker 7: You know, we're already seeing like some of these hagfish
Speaker 7: are four to six feet long. Others are absolutely tiny,
Speaker 7: like you know, ten centimeters. I'm sorry I keep jumping
Speaker 7: between the two systems, but you and we just don't
Speaker 7: know how old they get, no.
Speaker 6: Because nothing calcifies, there's nothing to there's such a mystery.
Speaker 7: And so that's one of those things that a lot
Speaker 7: of fish are indeterminate growers, right, Like, they technically have
Speaker 7: the potential to grow forever. Right but in the deep sea,
Speaker 7: especially with such a strong defense mechanism like this line
Speaker 7: that they have, you know, yeah, they could, they could
Speaker 7: live decades, they could live over one hundred years.
Speaker 6: Who knows, one hundred year old possibly jawless, slimy tube
Speaker 6: of whale eating charisma. That is what a hagfish is.
Speaker 6: And I could ask questions for one hundred more years.
Speaker 6: But onto your questions, patrons. But first, we make a
Speaker 6: donation every episode, and this week we're going to send
Speaker 6: some cash to the Ocean Exploration Trust, which is a
Speaker 6: nonprofit established to explore the world's oceans and seek out
Speaker 6: new discoveries in the fields of geology and biology, maritime history, archaeology,
Speaker 6: and chemistry. And the Ocean Exploration Trust owns and operates
Speaker 6: the exploration vessel Nautilus, and you can see their expeditions
Speaker 6: via Nautilus Live on YouTube, which are wonderful. I love
Speaker 6: them so much. I'm going to link on my website
Speaker 6: at aliword dot com slash smologies, slash hagfish, shout out
Speaker 6: to the Nautilus crew.
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Speaker 2: polar bears, you're on a lake, driving the speedboat three
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Speaker 2: your whiskers and the sun on your big blubbery face.
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Speaker 6: I love you guys, on to your Patreon questions and
Speaker 6: a lot of you were definitely on the same page
Speaker 6: when it came to these eel like creatures of the deep.
Speaker 6: So here we go a few people including Amber and
Speaker 6: Jonathan Mead, as well as Kelsey Leboo, French, Gina Martinez,
Speaker 6: Megan Metcalf, Jessica Beard, a Man of Blackburn, Hannah Lese,
Speaker 6: Kimberliefa Harrow, Katie Kelly Hanken, Dominica Deck, and Trent High.
Speaker 6: As this next one, Amber and Jonathan Meade want to
Speaker 6: know are there any medical or cosmetic uses for hagfish slime.
Speaker 7: I think there's definitely an interest in the cosmetic field
Speaker 7: as well as in the medical field, in the sense
Speaker 7: that it can maybe be used as a biological filter,
Speaker 7: right that you know, if it blocks the flow of
Speaker 7: water and traps water, you can maybe use as an
Speaker 7: actual filter material. There's interest in using it as a
Speaker 7: food product as well as like an egg replacement. I've
Speaker 7: seen hagfish slime itself turn up in recipes really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: So I think that there's people for a long time
Speaker 7: have been looking to use it for different things. I
Speaker 7: think partially what's limited it is the availability of hagfish
Speaker 7: like they're just not super common on land. Yeah, and
Speaker 7: as well that it's difficult to store the slime.
Speaker 6: Oh so yeah, what happens if you have a mason
Speaker 6: jar for the hagfish line.
Speaker 7: It eventually, if it's in water, it will collapse. The
Speaker 7: network does collapse down, and it essentially will somewhat dissolve away.
Speaker 6: Colin Elijah wants to know where do they fall in
Speaker 6: the food chain? You know, do other animals want to
Speaker 6: even eat something that slimy? But yeah, but if you're
Speaker 6: a mammal, a sea mammal, you can chomp on it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but where do they fall in the food chain?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would say, yeah, I wouldn't say that they
Speaker 7: form the bottom of the food chain, okay, but I
Speaker 7: wouldn't say that they're necessarily the top either. You know,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of really active predators even in the deep,
Speaker 7: Like there's big active shark species. There's big fish species
Speaker 7: that would probably be the dominant predator down there. But
Speaker 7: I think that because does they have such a strong
Speaker 7: defense mechanism which could also be viewed as sort of
Speaker 7: a competitive thing. So as they're feeding at a carcass,
Speaker 7: they do release bits of slime, h right, And that's
Speaker 7: sort of one of My ideas too, is whether or
Speaker 7: not they actually use it to compete around a carcass. Right,
Speaker 7: So hagfish can all deal with the slime, but nothing
Speaker 7: else can, right. But yeah, in terms of where they fall,
Speaker 7: like they are preyed upon, but they're also a predator,
Speaker 7: so I think they're going to be somewhere in the
Speaker 7: middle in terms of the you know, the zones of
Speaker 7: animals out there.
Speaker 6: Okay, So chrisper asked this next one, but so did
Speaker 6: Jack Aman and Iron Lannie Bauer, Sonya Karpelovich, Bonnie Joyce,
Speaker 6: Amelia Blakeman, Kitty Halberson, Von Spedsen, Zoe Jane Haley Everson,
Speaker 6: Erica Hohnka, Danny Q, and Selina. They all ask some
Speaker 6: form of this hungry question. Chris Burer wants to know
Speaker 6: will hagfish sushi ever trend Ooh?
Speaker 7: While hagfish are eaten in Korea and probably elsewhere in
Speaker 7: Southeast Asia, they're barbecued typically. Okay, Yeah, have you ever
Speaker 7: eaten it? I have never eaten it. I think the
Speaker 7: more time you spend with stuff, the more you sense
Speaker 7: its distinct smell, and the more that it would probably
Speaker 7: taste like they smell.
Speaker 6: Okay, Eric Bahanco wants to know. Have you ever tried
Speaker 6: eating their slime?
Speaker 7: No, but I know people have and that it is
Speaker 7: a part of recipes.
Speaker 6: Sarah wants to know. Is hagfish slime a solid or
Speaker 6: a liquid? Is it a non Newtonian fluid?
Speaker 7: It is a non Newtonian fluid.
Speaker 6: What is a non Newtonian fluid? I'm glad you asked. Okay,
Speaker 6: So a non Newtonian fluid is a fluid that doesn't
Speaker 6: follow Newton's law of viscosity. It says that in non
Speaker 6: Newtonian fluids, so that thickness can change when under force
Speaker 6: to be either more liquid or it can be more solid.
Speaker 6: So okay. Ketchup, for example, becomes runnier when you shake
Speaker 6: it up. So ketchup is a non Newtonian fluid.
Speaker 7: Could you believe that?
Speaker 6: Just think you're never going to eat a hot dog?
Speaker 6: The same? Well now, for various reasons. Also custard, honey, toothpaste, paint, blood, shampoo,
Speaker 6: all non Newtonian fluids.
Speaker 7: Yeah, hagfish slime is composed. It does have solid components
Speaker 7: to it, but because it essentially we call it viscous entrapman.
Speaker 7: So hagfish slime doesn't bind to water at all. Right,
Speaker 7: it essentially creates channels that are really narrow that work
Speaker 7: on the surface tension of water to trap it and
Speaker 7: slow its flow. Right, So it essentially slows water flow
Speaker 7: to a point that it creates the slime. But if
Speaker 7: you hold that slime out of water, all that water
Speaker 7: will drip out eventually, Wow, and you'll be laugh with nothing.
Speaker 6: Well, thing but a bit of yukis and fiber. Don't
Speaker 6: you want to be their friends?
Speaker 7: Though?
Speaker 6: Travis Damela wants to know what are their social lives like?
Speaker 6: Do they relate to one another? And where do they sleep?
Speaker 6: I think that's another great question. So I think hagfish
Speaker 6: have a very vibrant social life.
Speaker 2: I got lots of.
Speaker 7: I think that they We see them living in burrows together.
Speaker 7: We don't know about their relationship to each other, but
Speaker 7: they seem to like to pack together. They do like
Speaker 7: to be together in congregations. You know, where you find
Speaker 7: one hagfish, you find more. Right, So, whether or not
Speaker 7: that has to do with the environment being really conducive
Speaker 7: to hagfish, or whether or not they actually seek out
Speaker 7: a social group, we don't know. We're actually working on
Speaker 7: at least filming them in captivity to better understand how
Speaker 7: they interact with each other, you know, over the days
Speaker 7: and weeks of you know, circling around these tanks and
Speaker 7: with very limited hiding spots. Right, we provide them with
Speaker 7: habitat to hide in, but we're interested in how they
Speaker 7: maybe compete for that habitat, Like are there dominant hagfish
Speaker 7: and subordinate hagfish or are they sort of devoid of
Speaker 7: that altogether? Right, which is also a possibility that you know,
Speaker 7: the whole competition that we see in a lot of
Speaker 7: other animals maybe such an energy waster for a hagfish
Speaker 7: that they just don't do it.
Speaker 6: So many big slippery questions that we don't know now
Speaker 6: as we chew our way out of this delicious carcass
Speaker 6: of an episode. I always want to know what makes
Speaker 6: anologists love their job? What is your favorite thing about
Speaker 6: your job? What's your favorite thing about hagfish or your
Speaker 6: job or what you do.
Speaker 7: I think that's it's discovery. I think it's, like you
Speaker 7: were saying earlier, it's being on the forefront of something.
Speaker 7: It's being like literally looking into the abyss, like how
Speaker 7: did natural selection act upon this? What is this mean?
Speaker 7: In terms of how hagfish relate to each other, how
Speaker 7: do they relate to vertebrates and other fish. And I
Speaker 7: think that that's something that just keeps us endlessly intrigued,
Speaker 7: because you know, there's more unanswered questions and answered questions.
Speaker 7: And I think that's good for any scientific field, right,
Speaker 7: Like you want to think you have a good idea
Speaker 7: of what's going on, but the more you know, the
Speaker 7: more you know you don't know.
Speaker 6: Haha, well said. But again, what we do know, these
Speaker 6: slime generating mysteries of the deep are delightful. We know
Speaker 6: that we learned that hagfish have been around for more
Speaker 6: than three hundred million years. They eat only every few months,
Speaker 6: and they're technically jallous, but still have two rows of
Speaker 6: tooth like structures made of keraten. They are the great
Speaker 6: recyclers of the ocean floor. They have a skull made
Speaker 6: out of cartilage. Are somehow neither a vertebrate or an invertebrate,
Speaker 6: and they have a powerful snoot but some questionable. And
Speaker 6: they're probably the world's greatest producers of slime. And if
Speaker 6: you're like, I need to do a deep dive into
Speaker 6: the literature about what we do know about these my
Speaker 6: new favorite creatures who I will never run into.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 6: Tim says that there's two hagfish bibles out there. There's
Speaker 6: the Biology of Hagfish and Hagfish Biology, and I really
Speaker 6: hope that the authors of those are friends. Okay, of course,
Speaker 6: there's also our full not Safe for kids hagfish Ology episode.
Speaker 6: It's very colorful and very detailed. Do dive in if
Speaker 6: you are not around children. So to find out more
Speaker 6: about Tim Wineguard, you can google the Douglas Fudge Lab
Speaker 6: at Chapman University, where you can stay up to date
Speaker 6: on all their latest research. As he's not on social media.
Speaker 6: But we also want to thank him though. Thank you
Speaker 6: hagfishologist Tim Weiningardt. Thank you to newsmologites for joining us.
Speaker 6: New episodes are out about every two weeks or thereabouts,
Speaker 6: and there's links to the full juicy R rated episode
Speaker 6: available at alleywar dot com or in the show notes.
Speaker 6: There's a full list of links and and a list
Speaker 6: of credits for this episode. Because we like to keep
Speaker 6: things small around here, and if you listen to the
Speaker 6: end of the show, I give a piece of advice,
Speaker 6: and this week it's that there's this thing called My
Speaker 6: Critter Catcher. They are not a sponsor of the show
Speaker 6: at all. I just think it's neat and it's this
Speaker 6: contraption that helps you really gently pick up bugs or critters,
Speaker 6: and it's really great. If you ever see a spider
Speaker 6: and you want to locate it outside, there's no chasing
Speaker 6: or squishing. It's just this long arm to keep your
Speaker 6: distance and you can pick it up very sweetly with
Speaker 6: soft brussels and say, okay, going for a ride now,
Speaker 6: and deposit it outside, just in case that helps anyone.
Speaker 6: It's called my Critter Catcher. I think that it's just
Speaker 6: a nice thing. Okay, until next time, smologites, Bye bye.
Speaker 7: Pology.
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