yeah, lampreys are freakin' nasty. Hagfish (another jawless fish) are better because at least they don't have those teeth. Hagfish are often raised in Asia and sold as "eelskin". So if you buy an eelskin wallet, it's probably one of these dudes http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/labs/biomaterials/overhand.jpg
They do a cool trick where they tie themselves in a knot to get traction when tearing chunks out of carcasses. They also produce slime like nothing else. They will literally fill a bucket with thick slime in minutes.
But lampreys are scary. There's actually an interesting story about their invasion from the Atlantic Ocean into the Great Lakes. To help reduce their numbers (they were decimating native fish stocks), they had to develop a lampricide, a toxin that was poisonous only to the larval stage. The larvae are called ammocaetes and bury themselves in the substrate.
I've only seen one lamprey in real life. I was in a, shall we say, less than sober state. So when I saw it flashing on the rock I was sitting on in a stream, I thought I had imagined it. But it was real, and totally like something out of a nightmare. Luckily, it was only a small one, like a foot long.
They do a cool trick where they tie themselves in a knot to get traction when tearing chunks out of carcasses. They also produce slime like nothing else. They will literally fill a bucket with thick slime in minutes.
But lampreys are scary. There's actually an interesting story about their invasion from the Atlantic Ocean into the Great Lakes. To help reduce their numbers (they were decimating native fish stocks), they had to develop a lampricide, a toxin that was poisonous only to the larval stage. The larvae are called ammocaetes and bury themselves in the substrate.
I've only seen one lamprey in real life. I was in a, shall we say, less than sober state. So when I saw it flashing on the rock I was sitting on in a stream, I thought I had imagined it. But it was real, and totally like something out of a nightmare. Luckily, it was only a small one, like a foot long.
