The Origins of Headfish

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The headfish is a jawless primitive eel-like creature. They are thought to have diverged at around the same time that vertebrates popped up on the evolutionary spectrum. Head fish for a long time were defined as craniots, which means they have a cranium surrounding their brain but no calcification of anything in their body.

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

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

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

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