Hagfish Slime

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Giant earthworms covered in silvery ectoplasm on a two lane highway covering the whole thing. After slithering toward the gutter, a four car pile up looks like a giant sneezed on it. There are bulldozers scooping up slime eels by the hundreds. They're hosing off the road with apparently 5,000 gallons of water and then just letting them die there on the shoulder.

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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This week's donation went to the Wildlife Research Station: https://www.algonquinwrs.ca

More links at alieward.com/ologies/hagfishology

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Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

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