The Applications of Haggfish Slime

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Haggfish slime can be formed in any container and conform to the shape of almost anything. The fibers themselves, I've always been interested in actually using for textile. They're a micron in diameter. Even when you think of microfiber clothing, which is so soft, that stuff's like 30 to 50 microns in diameter. So it's much finer. It just gets wrapped around everything with thousands of, you know, with miles and miles of fiber is very easy for it to just get wrapped around things and stay there.

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

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

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