Creepy Critters - The Hagfish

The hagfish, also known as a snot eel, is without a doubt the slimiest, slipperiest scavenger of the deep. Hagfish fall into the class of fish called agnatha, meaning jawless. As the name suggests, they lack jaws, but have two rows of sharp little teeth, perfect for taking a circular bite out of flesh. They use these formidable little chompers not only to eat the carcasses that fall to the bottom of the sea, but also to latch onto dying animals. They love to eat things from the inside out, worming their way into dead bodies before bursting forth in all their fattened slimy glory.

Each hagfish can generate up to 5 gallons of slime individually. Photo credit
dirtsailor2003 at Flickr.

They are also incredibly good at squeezing through tight spaces too. Some researchers found that hagfish can squeeze into places that are half of their body width. How do they achieve it? Their skin is not tightly attached to their muscles, meaning they can actually redistribute the blood in their bodies to make one portion of their body slimmer while another expands!

What makes the hagfish most famous, however, is why it is often called a snot eel. When touched or grabbed by a predator, the hagfish secretes a thick white mucus out of over 100 glands on its body. One hagfish can produce a little more than 5 gallons of mucus at once. This serves as a pretty good deterrent for other fish that try to eat them; the mucus clogs up their gills and makes it hard to breath, choking them a level of slime old school Nickelodeon would be proud of.

If the slime isn't enough, hagfish can physically tie themselves into knots since they lack a spinal column (you can see the not if you jump to about 1:00 in the video below, taken from Nautilus Live footage).

I am a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, and whenever I see these fish and the way they can choke things with mucus, I can't help thinking of the horrid Queller demon from season 5. The awful thing crawls over people at night, clogging up their throats with slime as it leers over them with teeth of a lamprey, the hagfish's close cousin. If you don't believe me, look at the slime, look at these teeth, and then look up the Queller. It's the stuff of nightmares, and that's why these slimy fishes make it into my lineup of creepy critters.

The teeth of a lamprey, also an agnathan related to hagfish. Photo from Wikipedia.

Creepy Critters - The Bobbit Worm

Photo credit Krist-Mikael Krister at Flickr

It lurks in the darkness, barely seeing, barely moving, feelers outstretched, searching for its next victim. The hapless fish will be dragged beneath the sand, maybe in one piece, maybe split in two. With one of the creepiest methods of catching prey, the sand striker, also known as the Bobbit worm, Eunice aphroditois, gets my vote for one of the scariest animals in the sea.

For most people, looking at the Bobbit worm is enough to freak them out, but let's get into the details of why this animal makes me squirm.

1. The worm can grow up to 10 ft long, hiding almost all of its body underneath the sand while its head pops up above for feeding. It may be the longest polychaete worm on the planet.
2. The worm senses fish with its outstretched feelers and by seeing the shadows as they swim by. When a fish gets close enough, it strikes quickly, grabbing its prey with deadly force that sometimes breaks the backbone of the fish and can split it in half! 
3. If the strike doesn't kill the fish, the worm injects a venom which kills it and helps the worm digest it.
4. It can eat fish that are much larger than its mouth. Check out how it takes down a lionfish!

With all of these crazy elements going for it, this worm is no stranger to the tabloids. Take its name, for instance. The Bobbit Worm was named by Dr. Terry Gosliner after a trip to the Phillipines where he saw the worm. At the time, the Lorena Bobbit case was making headlines. When Lorena found out her husband was cheating on her, she cut off his penis while he was sleeping and threw it in a nearby field. When Gosliner saw the powerful jaws of the nocturnal sand striker and the way it sliced through the backbones of fish, it reminded him of Lorena Bobbit's evening revenge. Since then, both lady and worm have attracted a sort of morbid fascination.

Photo credit Mark Atwell at Flickr

This worm also hit tabloids in England when it found its way into the Newquay Aquarium. Aquarists were baffled as several fish turn up injured or disappeared, and especially when they found some of the coral in the tank sliced clean through. When the aquarists took apart the tank looking for the culprit, they found a 4ft Bobbit worm, which they named Barry. It is assumed he must have entered the tank with the coral when he was just a small larvae. While they originally thought Barry too ugly to display, the international attention he gained led them to put him in his own tank where a curious public could see him. 

So, as Halloween approaches, would you dare take a peak? Do you think the Bobbit worm is one of the coolest, scariest animals in the sea?