Heidi de Maine is a qualified marine biologist with many years’ experience working with animals. She has volunteered at aquariums and at animal facilities such as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (Jersey Zoo) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), and children and education are her focus. Growing up in South Africa gave her an appreciation for wildlife, and living inland gave her the yearning for the sea. Now she lives at the coast and loves sharing her knowledge of the marine environment. This post was originally published on 5 April 2011 on her own blog, Abby the Aquarist, which she runs with illustrator Keli Hazelton.Together, they also write children’s books. Heidi was even on TV a short while ago ... Watch the clips here.
What’s long, thin, slimy, has no stomach and three hearts? A hagfish of course!
Yes, it’s not so cute and cuddly, but it’s fascinating and I had such a laugh this last week so I just have to tell you about it. One of our aquarists is writing a paper on the stress response of hagfish, so I went to check out what was happening. I arrived at just the right time because he was about to weigh the hagfish.
For those of you who don’t know, hagfish give off slime when they get stressed ... Some can even give off a whole bucket of slime! I’ve seen it for myself!
So, to prevent this from happening, while they get weighed they need to get anaesthetised (they have to go to sleep for a bit or at least be a bit drowsy so that they don’t get stressed easily). The anaesthetic is put into the water and soon after, they become very relaxed. This makes handling them a lot easier.
Unfortunately, one of the hagfish was still quite wide awake so when it was picked up, it wriggled around so much that it managed to wriggle right out of the aquarist’s hands and plopped straight into the bucket as if it had planned that all along! I had to laugh at the look on the aquarist’s face – he couldn’t believe his eyes – and the amount of slime the hagfish gave off was unbelievable!
It gave off so much that we couldn’t weigh it at first. (We weigh them by putting them onto a scale in a bucket of water, of which we know the weight already.) The little guy obviously wasn’t happy with being moved. Luckily, the anaesthetic took effect quite soon after that so we could remove all the slime and weigh him.
I think the next step is to weigh the slime to see how much is given off and then they’re also going to test the blood for stress enzymes, but I needed to get to my dive feed in time so I had to rush off and couldn’t stick around to watch more. Amazing what you can learn from something that seems so simple!
Because of this event, I thought I’d quickly look up a few things about hagfish for you.
Did you know?
- Hagfish scavenge on dead or disabled fish – they’re like the vultures of the sea – but they also eat invertebrates (the little things in the sea that don’t have a backbone) like worms.
- They can go for up to 7 months without eating.
- They are almost blind, but they’ve got a good sense of touch and smell.
- They have a rasp-like tongue that tears into the flesh of their prey.
- Once they’ve given off slime and the danger has passed, they tie themselves into a knot to get the slime off themselves. (The one in the photo above looks a bit like Houdini!)
- Don’t have nightmares tonight Sea Fans, these little guys don’t harm us. Rather think of how much fun you could have if you could tie yourself in a knot like a hagfish!
Have a great week Sea Fans!
Cheers
Abby
Come and meet the seriously weird hagfish!
You can come and see just how weird this wonder really is during the school holidays (25 June to 17 July), when we’ll be getting into all fish Weird, Wild and Wonderful. Read more about our plans here.
More blogs by Heidi
Interview with a pro: Marine biologist Becs Smith
Guest photo essay: Sharks, squid and starfish at Yebo Gogga ... with a few worms on pizza
