The humble hagfish is an ugly, gray, eel-like creature best known for its ability to unleash a cloud of sticky slime onto unsuspecting predators, clogging the gills and suffocating said predators.

Hagfish are undoubtedly weird. Sometimes called slime eels, they aren’t actually eels. They are fish but have no scales or fins. Hagfish are the only vertebrates with no spine. They do have a skull, ...

At first glance, these primitive fish are striking thanks to their unusual appearance. With no fins or scales, these pinkish-gray fish look more like giant earthworms gone wrong with rows of frightful ...

The first time Vinalhaven lobsterboat captain Frank Thompson trapped hagfish in the Gulf of Maine, the pinkish-gray, snakelike animals popped the hatch off his hold — with their slime. When stressed ...

Researchers found that the slime eel, or hagfish, known for deluging predators with mucus, tripled the size of its genome hundreds of millions of years ago. By Veronique Greenwood The hagfish, a ...

Hagfish produce copious amounts of slime when attacked, which chokes predators’ gills in a gooey net. Scientists now know that mucus plays a critical role in hagfish slime’s remarkable clogging ...

What keeps the boneless, jawless hagfish thriving after more than 300 million years? SLIME What keeps the boneless, jawless hagfish thriving after more than 300 million years? SLIME. The goop it ...

Researchers have successfully demonstrated that hagfish slime proteins can accurately replicate membranes in the human eye. Scientists were able to properly grow retinal cells on hagfish slime ...

This eel-like fish lives on the seabed over 300 feet below the surface where it feasts on dead animals and protects itself from attack using a suffocating slime. When you purchase through links on our ...

The hagfish, a deep-sea scavenger about the size and shape of a tube sock, has the curious ability to smother itself in its own snot. The mucus is a defense mechanism, released into the water (or in ...