#aminals

so thank you for this ask for 3 reasons. one, i have now spent over two hours looking at pictures of hagfish and selecting my favorites, which is one of the best uses for my time i've yet experienced. two, in the course of looking up pictures of hagfish i have found several detailed marine biology websites which were finally able to provide sources and details on hagfish sexual function (answer: there are at minimum reports of some sort of bipotential gonad situation in some immature hagfish of several species but the actual details of their adult reproduction are fairly mysterious and the claim that they're bidirectional serial sex-changers has not been proven to current standards such that many researchers are unwilling to count them among known species that do that). three, i have now learned that there are over 70 known species of hagfish, which is information that somehow escaped me until now. and quite probably more species than that, given as they live at depth and mostly aren't that visually distinct from each other, because they are the perfect animal.

anyway let's go. content label: i am going to describe the basic mechanics of how they eat but i promise i am holding back.

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i like this one because it shows the way they tie themselves in knots. it's specifically an overhand knot from the tail to the head, though i don't know if this behavior has been observed in every species (probably not) so it would be interesting to know if they all do overhands.

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this is objectively adorable.

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another hagfish in a sponge but this time you can see their tooth plates. smiling at us. often people assume the 'o' in their face is their mouth but that's actually their nostril. they have a unique and powerful chemoreceptor system that majorly incorporates their nostril but also takes in information from all over the body. (x) and they have a mouth but no jaw. the two tooth plates pinch together when retracted, which grips onto their prey. for larger prey that they can't swallow whole they grip onto the flesh with their tooth plates and then tie themselves in that overhand knot which they move down their body from their tail to their head, pushing against their prey and pulling a mouthful of flesh free.

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i like that they seem to just kind of hang out together. i don't think anyone's specifically studied how social they are? they seem to show up in high density and pacific hagfish at least seem to share burrows a fair amount. can i please have infinite budget to study every single detail of hagfish forever. what are they doing down there.

honorable mention to the museum of new zealand footage of their bait trap and multiple animals failing to predate on hagfish and an instance of successful predation by a hagfish

the pictures are just pacific hagfish because it's difficult to find pictures of the other species, particularly pictures where they're alive. but you get to see different species of hagfish in the video! and i don't have a favorite species currently but possibly i will in the future.

stepping on a bug lightly enough that he didn't kill it, then getting scared when he moved his paw and the bug flew away

laying down on his own tail and then shifting around grumpily because he was Uncomfortable and clearly couldn't figure out why

licking a wire toy so repeatedly that my FIL had to put it away because he was worried that this boy would cut his tongue open

getting absolutely soaked every time he tries to drink from the sink, because he doesn't know how to approach the stream of water without sticking his entire head through it first

But today... today was a Struggle beyond all other.

As that last point indicates, one of his favorite spots to be is in a sink. It doesn't seem to matter which one, as long as he's in one. He purrs up a storm, scent marks everything, and LOVES getting petted while he does so. My wife and I are cat-sitting, so I had the honor of giving him his Sink Pets this morning.

All was well, until he got so into contorting himself and scent marking everything that he pushed his head behind the cold water handle and accidentally turned the sink on.

It scared the SHIT out of him.

As soon as the tiny dribble of water exited the tap, he poofed his tail up, meowed angrily, and absolutely BOLTED out of the bathroom, meowing and yelling all the way. He first ran to the window, presumably to figure out what Terrible Threat had caused the sink to turn on, and then ran away AGAIN to hide in my wife's childhood bedroom. Where he stayed for the next HOUR, in case the Evil Sink Water would try to find him.