The Importance of a Diverse Microbiome

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Hagfish have very low metabolisms. If you compared them to a vertebrate, they'd have one of the lowest metabolisms of any vertebrate. They live slow. So there's that, right? There's, you know, we've observed them absolutely gorging at these deep sea sites and filling their guts to the point that there may be many times their original mass. And can you run me through some body parts of a headfish? Yeah.

Hagfish: these floppy hot dogs of the deep sea deserve our undying respect. Tim Winegard is a professional hagfishologist (YES IT'S A WORD) at Chapman University, and he dishes on the world's slimiest treasures. Prepare to hear about swift escapes, spellbinding clots of slime, patchy backstories, aphrodisiacs, outlasting extinction events, why you don't always need a spine, eating your way out of a dead whale, and -- like a slippery messiah -- turning water to slime. Also Alie confronts her fear of m*cus.

Comparative Biomaterials Lab at Chapman University: https://sites.chapman.edu/fudge/

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Theme song by Nick Thorburn

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