Excuse me, is your dress made out of slime?

Q: What do you do with a bucket of hagfish slime?

A:  If you are a hagfish you use it to gum up the gills and mouths of things trying to eat you.  If you’re a scientist you see if you can make clothing or bullet proof vests out of it.

The hagfish gets no love from most people unless you happen to be a teenage boy with a fascination for all things snot like. A hagfish is an ancient creature older than the dinosaurs which lives in the deep deep depths of the ocean 5,600 feet below the surface feeding on mainly dead things. This blind boneless “fish” has no teeth, but eats by using the hooks on the end of its tongue to rip off pieces of food.  By far the most memorable thing about a hagfish is the SLIME.  I had the chance to see a hagfish and its slime up close and personal one day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon.  The program presenter had a hagfish in a five gallon bucket. Needless to say the hagfish did not like being moved from one place to another and did what hagfish do when threatened or agitated it oozed slime. This slime comes out though pores in the skin and there can be as many as one hundred on each side of the hagfish’s body. (Check out the a really cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2EOP3ohnE)  The presenter reached in and pulled out the hagfish slime telling us that one hagfish can produce about one gallon of slime at a time! He invited us up at the end of the program to touch his slime. How could I resist.  I grabbed hold of the edge of the slime with two fingers and pulled, it stretched nicely, but then I tried to let go it stuck fast. A few minutes of scraping and a few tissues later I was free of the slime.  

At first glance this clear slime looks a little bit like snot, but unlike mucus this stuff bends and stretches and sticks to everything it comes in contact with.  This is because unlike mucus the hagfish slime has little tiny fibers in the slime which allows it to stretch without breaking. Apparently if you allow hagfish slime to dry it becomes rather silky and can be twisted into thread.  Scientists are currently working in the lab to see if they can replicate the protein structure of the hagfish fibers as a way to make super stretchy fabrics for athletic wear, packing materials, or even bulletproof vests.  Environmentally friendly fabric made from hagfish slime, who would have thought.

 

For more information:

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/eco-news/fish-snot-clothing.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-07/study-finds-fish-snot-fashionable-alternative/4613712
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347187/description/Repellent_slime_has_material_virtues
http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/atlantic-hagfish.html
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/lewis_clark01/logs/jul08/media/hagfish.html