Hidden Talents Animals Use To Hunt That Show Us Mother Nature Is Cray

Hagfish Choke Other Fish

Photo credit: Ryan Somma/Flickr

To be honest, the hagfish doesn’t have much going for it. It has a skull but no vertebrate, is jawless so it can’t bite anything to eat it, and it can’t see very well. How has this thing survived for thousands of years? Well, the one thing it does have is a unique way to choke the fish that try to attack it.

When a hagfish is attacked or feels in danger, it squirts out slime. The slime that oozes out of them is so thick that it can clog the fins of the fish around it. Thanks to this weapon, the hagfish has killed predators as big as sharks. Their slime can also kill them too, but they’ve found a way around that by trying themselves into knots and squeezing the slime off them.