14 Facts About Hagfish

Hagfish have no true fins and have six or eight barbels around the mouth and a single nostril.

Hagfish are long and vermiform, and can exude copious quantities of a milky and fibrous slime or mucus from about 100 glands or invaginations running along their flanks.

Hagfish are able to produce a lot of slime, which combines with seawater, when they are in danger as a defense mechanism.

Hagfish have a well-developed dermal capillary network that supplies the skin with oxygen when the animal is buried in anoxic mud, as well as a high tolerance for both hypoxia and anoxia, with a well developed anaerobic metabolism.

Hagfish eye lacks a lens, extraocular muscles, and the three motor cranial nerves found in more complex vertebrates, which is significant to the study of the evolution of more complex eyes.

Hagfish are known to have one of the lowest blood pressures among the vertebrates.

Hagfish are the only known vertebrates with osmoregulation isosmotic to their external environment.

Hagfish do not have a larval stage, in contrast to lampreys.

Hagfish have a mesonephric kidney and are often neotenic of their pronephric kidney.

Hagfish possess Gonadotropins which secrete from pituitary glands to the gonads to stimulate development.

Hagfish have been observed actively hunting the red bandfish, Cepola haastii, in its burrow, possibly using their slime to suffocate the fish before grasping it with their dental plates and dragging it from the burrow.

Hagfish are in the group Cyclostomata which includes jawless fish.

Hagfish are excluded from the subphylum Gnathostomata because of morphological characteristics including the Hagfish arched tongue.

Hagfish skin, used in a variety of clothing accessories, is usually referred to as "eel skin".