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I participated in an ecological impact study off the coast of guam once upon a time and we pulled a couple of these up from the sea floor in deep sea traps ... the amount of slime covering the back deck was truly astonishing ... they also have really freaky mouths -- a circle of teeth on a squishy stalk reminiscent of the inner mouth from the movie Aliens ...

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They are freakily alien. Hagfish and lampreys (the jawless fish) are in a separate group to all other vertebrates that split off before jaws evolved. Even weird fish like seahorses are more closely related to us than these creatures.

It's fascinating to me that these species have held on all this time, given that jaws were such a wildly successful adaptation.

The mouth reminds me more of the byrum (AKA “shitweasel”) from Dreamcatcher.

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