has managed to sequence the first genome of the myxini –also known as ‘hagfish’–, the only large group of vertebrates for which there was no reference genome of any of its species yet.

Most of a hagfish's brain is devoted to scent detection. Hagfishes are counted as vertebrates, but they do cause some problems for taxonomists. A vertebrate is typically defined as an animal that has ...

a recently recognized system in jawless vertebrates (hagfish and lamprey) and the more familiar adaptive immune system of jawed vertebrates 6. These two systems use entirely different types of ...

The hagfish is the only vertebrate whose body fluids are the same concentration as the surrounding seawater. It is easy to see how this mud-dwelling, eel-like fish named for its hideous appearance ...

At that time, jawless fish filled the seas, while jawed vertebrates were uncommon. Today, the opposite is true. Lampreys and hagfish are the only surviving groups of the once-dominant jawless ...

These findings show that both the hagfish and lamprey evolved their eel-like body form and strange feeding systems after they branched off from the rest of the vertebrate line of ancestry about 500 ...

An curved arrow pointing right. The Atlantic Hagfish is an eel-shaped creature that releases a mass of slime when threatened. The slime is so good at holding water that scientists are now studying ...

The research team previously considered the creature as a relative of hagfish, a jawless vertebrate. The team used the SPring-8 synchrotron radiation facility in Hyogo Prefecture to three ...

The hagfish is a slime-emitting ocean-dweller that's remained unchanged for 300 million years--and it shows. It has a skull (but no spine), velvet smooth skin, and a terrifying pit of a mouth that ...

In this adapted extract from "Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans" (Algonquin Books, 2024), author and vertebrates zoologist Bill Schutt investigates the extraordinary bite ...