Recently, I published with my colleagues from Te Papa Fish Team and Massey University some interesting findings about a fantastic group of species: hagfishes. Those primitive deep-sea fishes repulse any predator attack using their slime. I present examples of how hagfish stop the attack from shark several times their sizes. And it even looked easy… The paper also documents a first ever observed predating behaviour of hagfishes in the wild. We thought they were only eating dead or dying animals, but now we know that they can also hunt for preys. Combining this with the fact that hagfish have existed on Earth, almost unchanged, for 300 millions years and are the ancestors of all vertebrates, they are quite impressive animals! You can download the open-access paper here.
Those videos got National Geographic attention and were published on their website where you can find other examples of amazing animal behaviours. It is well worth having a look at. Follow this link to the National Geographic video.
The seal shark, Dalatias licha, attacking the common hagfish, Eptatretus cirrhatus
In the meantime, our team is getting ready for another expedition. In about ten days, we are heading down South for almost one month of intensive sampling. This time, we will study fish biology and behaviours off the Otago Peninsula and around the Auckland Islands which are part of the Sub Antarctic islands. This is an amazingly wild place to work on! I will post in the coming days more information about this exciting survey.
Speak to you soon,
Vincent
