THE JAWLESS HAGFISH

I recently watched a video on television about this animal, whose name is a, misnomer (it is not a fish). The video was about the fishing industry that catches hagfish for commercial purposes. The fact that there is even an industry that seeks out hagfish surprised me! 

The hagfish is a fish but a very primitive jawless one (Fig. 1). It is the only known living animal that has a skull but no vertebral column (although it does have rudimentary vertebrae). They have no internal skeleton, and what is present consists of only cartilage. They produce massive amounts of milky slime, which provide protection for the animal. They are up to 1.4 m length. They are gray fo pinkish in color (Wikipedia, 2026). They lack scales, paired fins, and dorsal fins. They can “tie” their own bodies into knots in order to rake off excess slime. 

Overall, they resemble a fat eel (15 to 16 cm long = about 6.5 inches)) with a rather complicated mouth area consisting of a pair of sensory barbels (used for smelling) next to the mouth, which has numerous well-hidden teeth located inside the mouth on a plate that protracts and retracts. In the central part of their mouth region is a rounded nostril (hagfish have a good sense of smell). The length of the main body of the animal has numerous small pores along its sides. There tails are paddle-like.

They are deep-sea bottom scavengers and eat carrion (e.g., dead whales—note: the hagfish enter the actual cavities of dead whales that settle out on the ocean floor. Hagfish are night dwellers. They prefer muddy bottoms as deep as 5600 feet (1700 m). They occur in dense congregations, with up to 15,000 individuals. Females outnumber males. They do not migrate more than about 60 miles.  

Their geologic range is Carboniferous Period to Recent (almost unchanged in 340 million years.)

                                                                      

They have been referred to as belonging to the “Agnatha group” of fishes (note: A = without; gnathos = jaw). They lack true bony jaws and teeth.  They have a skull but no vertebrae (note: they are the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebral column (although they do have rudimentary vertebrae). They use their raspy tongue to eat worms and carrion. They have a pointed snout and barbels around their mouth.

They are indeed eel-like but are not eels. They are jawless, marine fish that produce massive amounts of slime as a defense mechanism which can clog the gills of a predator. They use their rasping tongue to tear food. They have a biting mouth with a rasping tongue with two pairs of comb-shaped horny teeth. According to Wikipepia (2026), the poor vision of the hagfish is because their eyes lack a lens), which greatly reduces their vision. Interestingly, they are known to have one of the lowest blood pressures among the vertebrates. 

They are deep-sea carrion eaters that hunt for food at night (although the water is so deep and dark and hagfish are nearly blind, saying they are night dwellers is hardly justified). They prefer cold-water depths down to 1700 m (5600 feet). There are 67 living species of these animals which are referred to as myxines (or more commonly, as hagfish).

They live in temperate seas (i.e., prefer cold waters) in both hemispheres. They are absent in the Red Sea (they need salinity but the Red Sea might be too saline and/or too warm). 

They are eaten by humans! And, there is a thriving industry that uses nets to catch them for human consumption.

  Classification

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

Class Myxini

Order Myxiniformes

Family Myxinidae

Genus Myxsine

Type Species M. glutinosa Linnaeus, 1758

There could be as many as seven genera. 

References

aquaticcomunity.com

Long, J.A. 1995. The rise of fishes. 500 million years of evolution. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore. 225 pp.

Wikipedia. 2026.

 

FUNNY SIMILARITIES IN SOME NAMES OF UNRELATED ANIMALS

      (The following are names in the published literature. I did not make them up. Also, this list is, by no means, complete.)

Flying lemur, flying fox, flying fish, flying squirrel, Wallace’s Flying frog, flying ray, flying snake, flying lemurs, flying squid.

Toad, toadstool, nematode, fire-bellied toads, jungle toads, helmeted water toads, false toads, midwife toads, Australian toadlets, European spadefoot toads, American spadefoot toads, narrow-mouth toads, hoptoads, red-spotted toads, oak toad, Railroad Valley Toad.

Bats, bat rays, globin bat, baseball bats, lesser bulldog bat, naked bulldog bat, painted bat, ghost-faced bat, big brown bat, little brown bat, great-evening bat, red-lipped batfish. 

Batman, Aqua Man, Spiderman.

Vampire, vampire squid, vampire bat, vampire squirrel, vampire crab, vampire flying frog, vampire fish (vampire tetra), vampire moth.

Killer whale, killer worm, killer bee, killer clam, killer snail, cow killer [= a large velvet ant].

Brachiopod, isopod, pteropod, amphipod, arthropod, cephalopod, decapod, gastropod. 

Meerkat, bobcat, fisher cat, polecat, civet cat, Asian bear cat.

King snake, king cobra, king crab, kingfisher, king vulture, king salmon, king penguin, King Kong.

Sea snake, tiger snake, cat snake, chicken snake, coachwhip snake, egg-eater snake, parrot snake, worm snake, zebra snake, wolf snake, whip snake, chicken snake, coachwhip snake, egg-eater snake, milk snake, parrot snake, tiger snake, flying snake, Golden-tree snake, tree snake.

Electric catfish, electric ray.

Globlin shark, globlin bat, globin spider.

Brain coral, elk-horn coral.

Hammerhead worm, hammerhead shark, hammerhead bat.

Flatworm, computer worm, round worm, tape worm, segmented worm, flat-topped worm, hookworm, ribbon worm, jumping worm, ice-cream-cone worm, spaghetti worm, scale worm, bloodworm, bamboo worm, fire worm, Christmas-tree worm, parchment worm, segmented worm, cone worm.

Bumblebee bat, painted bat, lesser bulldog bat, naked-bulldog bat.

Dracula ant, Dracula parrot, Dracula fish.

Honey bear, bearcat, meercats.

Coconuts, coconut crabs.

GEOLOGIC HISTORY OF THE MALDIVES ARCHIPELAGO

The independent Republic of Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean (Fig. 1) immediately south of India, is the smallest nation in Asia. It is also the lowest-lying country in the world with an average elevation of only 1.5 m (4.5 feet) above sea level. With the polar ice caps of Earth currently in the process of melting, the sea level rising,  thus the future of the Maldives (which is a popular vacation site) is problematic. In 2022 census, there were about 500,000 people living in the Maldives.

Figure 1. Location of the Maldives (north to south) chain of islands.

This island nation is made up of coral islands and sandbanks built on a submerged ridge. The islands represent low-laying coral atolls. An atoll is a roughly circular structure consisting of a coral reef surrounded by deep water of the open ocean. Typically, there are inlets in the reef that allow ocean water to accumulate in a shallow lagoon (10 to 100 m deep) in the center of an atoll. In some cases, the center of the atoll becomes filled with carbonate sand.

The Maldives began forming 68 million years ago as a hotspot, which also produced the Deccan Traps (lava flows) in India. As India moved northward, the hotspot generated an island chain in the Indian Ocean. Today, the islands are located in the central section of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge/Plateau which extends from north to south, as indicated by the red arrows in Figure 2.

                                                           
         Figure 2. The arrows point to the extent of the island chain

                       (archipelago) that makes up the Maldives.

    

For an informative step-by-step explanation of the formation of the Maldives, I recommend the website: dreamingofmaldives.com. It is a summary of the history of this remarkable chain of reefs: starting with a chain of active volcanoes, then the eruptions stopped, then sea level rose and the volcanoes sank underwater. At the interior of the islands, fringing reefs formed and eventually became barrier reefs. The entire process of atoll formation took about 30 million years.

There are 16 major atolls (and many minor ones) in the Maldives, each consisting of a ring of coral reef around a lagoon. In some cases the lagoons are open (Fig. 3), partially (Fig. 4) or completely filled (Fig. 5) with coral sand.

Figure 3. Example of a flooded atoll in the Maldives (Google Earth image).

Figure 4. Example of a partially flooded atoll in the northern part of the Maldives, with some human occupation (Google Earth image).

Figure 5. Example of a filled atoll in the northern part of the Maldives, with extensive human occupation (Google Earth image).

MOUNT ST. HELENS, SOON AFTER ITS ERUPTION IN 2008

 

Mount Saint Helens (current elevation 8,366 feet) is an active explosive dacite stratovolcano in southwestern Washington. Its latest eruption was on Jan. 16, 2008, but its eruption on May 18, 1980 was of considerable size, and, obviously, got the attention of inhabitants in that area and the rest of the world!

 

A magnitude 5.1 earthquake on May 18, 1980 initiated the collapse of part of the mountain-top of Mount St. Helens. The collapsed material ended up in a massive debris avalanche that released pressured gas, leading to a powerful lateral blast that that flattened 230 square miles of evergreen-tree forest! The eruption also caused a towering ash cloud (thousands of feet tall). 

Mount St. Helens was 9600 feet tall before the eruption, which lasted 9 hours. After the eruption, the mountain was 1300 feet shorter! It is now 8300 feet tall. The eruption lasted nine hours, killed 57 people, and permanently altered the landscape.

The area is now a National Volcanic Monument.

I made a trip to the area several months after the eruption, and that is when I took pictures (some shown here, below) of the mountain and its surroundings. The area was open then to the public and still is, as far as I know. One of the most memorable features was the huge amount of flattened trees. I had never seen anything like it before.

The following four images sum up most of the results of the massive eruption. I took the pictures from the paved highway that traverses through the Mt. St. Helens area:

                                   overview of Mt. St. Helens

swath of blown-down-trees destruction

   closeup of a representative tree-blow down area

                         a tree trunk still standing after the horrific" blow down" 

AN UNUSUAL FOSSIL CRINOID

This post concerns a fossil that I believe to be Catcocrinus glans (Hall), the youngest known species of this fossil crinoid genus, which is Early Carboniferous (i.e., Mississippian Period) in geologic age; thus it is about 350 million years old. This species is found in Missouri and Indiana. I include here an image of this particular crinoid (for the original illustration, see pl. 77, fig. 10 in Shimer and Schrock 1944:p. 196).  

This fossil does not resemble traditional crinoids, or any other illustration of any fossil, other than that of  Catcocrinus (note: I looked for a long time in every fossil book I have). The Mississippian age was a time of greatest crinoid diversity, and Catcocrinus seems to have been an example of a crinoid that took advantage of this diversification!

Figure 1. Actual specimen (6 3/4 cm tall and 5 cm wide) of this unusual crinoid. 

Figure 2. Catcorinus glans (copied from pl. 77, fig. 10---in Shimer and Schrock, 1944:p.196) [also see their short text note on p. 193].

Main Reference

Shimer, H. W. and R. R. Shrock.  Index fossils of North America. The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 837 pp. 

THE FALSE SHAMROCK FLOWER

Oaxlis triangularis = the “false Shamrock Flower," which is in the wood-sorrel family. This flower has five, clover-shaped petals that grow in clusters and resemble a shamrock. The flowers grow on very long and very narrow, flexible stems. The stems do not shoot up from roots in the soil; instead they emerge from little brown bulbs. The leaves fold-down at night. The entire plant can be up to 20 inches tall.

This plant is a perennial (i.e., thrives for multiple years). There are several cultivares (varieties). This plant has variously colored flowers: bright purple, deep purple, pink, lavender, white, etc. The flowers attract butterflies.

This plant blooms in spring and summer. In southern California, it  does best indoors (otherwise it will go dormant during the winter).

  Classification

Kingdom Plantae

Clades (4 of them)

Order Oxalidales

Family Oxalidaceae

Genus Oxalis 

Species triangularis

All parts of this plant have toxic potential.

This plant is native to South America.

Reference: Wikipedia, 2026 

AN UNUSUAL PINE SHRUB

Pinus mugo is the scientific name for the shrub called “Mugo pine,” a dwarf-sized pine plant, which is native to subalpine zones in central and southern Europe. The word “mugo” is Italian for “small mountain pine.” Today, this plant thrives at elevations between 3,300 to 7,300 feet in the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpatians, and Balkin Mountains.

Figure 1. Mugo Pine (adult!). This shrub has been growing for years in my garden, yet the shrub mostly remains the same size!

Figure 2. Mugo Pine closeup.

This perennial is a hearty (tough) plant that is cultivated throughout the world.

It can reach 15 to 20 feet in height and 20 to 30 feet in width, but some varieties average 2 to 5 feet tall. It is a slow-growing plant that can live in all types of soil. For the most part, this dwarf-pine tree gains only a few inches in height per year. It is also drought-tolerant. It is a plant that is well suited for growing in gardens. It prefers full-sun conditions. These pines can live up to 50 years.

It prefers full sun and can tolerate moderately hot temperatures. This tree does quite well in southern California (we have two trees in our gardent).

Genetic studies show that Pinus mugo persisted in glacial refugia (survival areas) during the last ice ages (e.g., north of the Alps). After the glaciers receded, the mugo populations reconnected allowing the gene flow and expansion across the European mountain chains into harsh alpine environments. After the glaciers receded, these populations of mugo reconnected, allowing genetic mixture and subsequent and expansion across the European mountain chains.

Main reference used for text: Wikipedia, 2026.