Georgia's new-found love interest - the slime-spewing hagfish!

Credit: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (modified with love hearts)

By Georgia Leaker

Last Friday Dr Karl launched his new book, Brain Food, via a live Twitter feed. Followers tweeted in questions and Dr Karl answered them. Yes, I tweeted incredibly inappropriate questions such as 'Why does it hurt when you poop out digested spicy food?" Yes, Dr Karl is sending me a free book. Hooray!

Dr Karl's new book (which is all about the science of food) is of particular interest to me. While I'm not much of a scientist, I am a foodist... Foodie? Foodologist? All of the above! I dream of becoming a food critic as it is my life goal to be paid to eat (something I've accomplished previously, but once was not enough!) and I am interested in every aspect of food - even the science.

So despite my turbulent first week in Sydney, it was nice to end on a high note.

Week two has seen a huge improvement - I'm getting lost less frequently and I'm beginning to settle into the life of a journo.

And... I think I'm in love. 'With who?' You ask. Not who, but what. The hagfish, to be exact.

The hagfish is no ordinary fish. Yes it may look strange, but it is so much more than an ugly deep-sea freakazoid.

Did you know that we have ACTUAL dinosaurs living on this planet? And I don't mean birds and lizards that 'evolved' from dinosaurs I mean actual dinosaurs! Yeah! The hagfish is that dinosaur!

I'm a bit of a dino-nut, although I know nothing about dinosaurs except that they are awesome and so are their bones. I figure that's all you really need to know. (The triceratops is my favourite.)

The hagfish has remained unevolved for roughly 550 million years. Fossils prove it to be true. That makes it one of the earliest sea creatures to ever exist - including all those already-extinct creatures! It existed before most dinosaurs did! (And anatomically modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years.)

They are slimy eel-like fish that live between 50 and 700m below sea level (that's a huge range of area, considering most fish are limited to very specific distance points) and it has a skull and creepy teeth but no jaw and no backbone. It excretes slime through pores along its body that it uses to both trap prey and defend against predators and you can only find it around Australia and New Zealand.

That stuff about using it's slime to act as a predator and defender was the topic of my new article. Biologists previously thought that hagfish were the scavengers of the sea, eating only already-dead fish. But new research in Scientific Reports suggests otherwise! The hagfish's hunting patterns are so magical and sneaky they have evaded recognition for the 200+ years since they were first identified and characterised in a book.

So sure, the hagfish might be hideous and slimy, but it is also awesome and clearly invincible to whatever has killed off all those extinct animals and that is cool. Why hasn't a telly show been made about this modern day dinosaur fish yet?

Bye for now,
Georgia

p.s. On the topic of dinosaurs, here's two awesome ones for you to check out: the Qantassaurus and the Dracorex Hogwartsia. Yes they are named after exactly what you think they are named after!