Mondo Knows Facts
A hagfish can turn buckets of water into thick slime in seconds
Hagfish slime glands release mucus proteins that expand dramatically.
When attacked by predatory fish, hagfish secrete protein threads and mucus from dozens of skin glands. The proteins react instantly with sea water, expanding over ten thousand times in volume to clog the predator gills and force it to choke and release the hagfish.
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Tags: hagfish, fish, slime
A hagfish can turn buckets of water into thick slime in seconds: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Hagfish slime glands release mucus proteins that expand dramatically. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Ocean, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.