Attack a hagfish and it turns the water around it into a gallon of fibrous slime that clogs your gills in under half a second. It's 300 million years old, ties itself in knots, and the Navy wants to copy it.
A first look at the hagfish: a jawless, eel-shaped survivor from 300 million years ago that scavenges carcasses on the deep seafloor and oozes when threatened.
Hagfish can absorb nutrients through their skin, survive months without food, and 'sneeze' to clear slime from their own single nostril. Biology unlike anything else alive.
Real deep-sea footage: a shark lunges, and in under half a second the hagfish fills its mouth and gills with expanding slime. The shark gags, convulses, and flees.
The 2011 Scientific Reports paper proved the slime is a lightning-fast defense that repelled predators in 14 attacks — and caught hagfish actively hunting live fish.
Watch a hagfish burrow into the sediment and suffocate hidden prey — predatory behavior scientists didn't know existed until these cameras rolled.
When a truck hauling live 'slime eels' overturned in 2017, the panicked animals coated passing cars in goo and shut down Highway 101 for hours.
Hagfish thread is stronger for its weight than nylon or Kevlar. The U.S. Navy engineered bacteria to mass-produce synthetic slime for ballistic and firefighting gear.