You don’t need to have ever seen a hagfish to have an idea of a hagfish. I mean, it’s called a hagfish for crying out loud. The reality of this creature is more or less exactly what you probably ...

The humble hagfish is an ugly, gray, eel-like creature best known for its ability to unleash a cloud of sticky slime onto unsuspecting predators, clogging the gills and suffocating said predators.

Hagfish slime is a rapid-deploy chemical defense that can clog a shark’s gills in seconds. The slime’s strength comes from microscopic protein threads that self-assemble when exposed to seawater.