Do Fish Eat Boogers? Digging Even Deeper
Recently I facetiously asked “Do Fish Eat Boogers?” Admittedly, it was a ploy to list a bunch of lures with “booger” or “snot” in their names. But then the Google machine got to work. Suddenly my feed was filled with all sorts of suggestions at the intersection of snot and fish. We all knew that they had a protective slime covering, but I had no idea how much research and inquiry had been done into more in-depth explorations of mucophagy.
Here are a few related links if you’re inclined to slide into this squishy mess:
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Mucus, slime and snot – “Join us as we explore the many ways mucus matters to marine life. From the infamous slime of hagfish to the elaborate snot palaces of larvaceans, get to know the ooey-gooey secretions that many forms of marine life depend on.”
Natural History Museum: Hagfishes: how much slime can a slime eel make? – “Hagfishes are unusual animals before slime even comes into the equation. But it is this snot-like substance that they are probably best known for. They can produce a bucketful of slime almost instantaneously, without the need for a constant giant tank of slime in their body ready to deploy. Their way around this is that they don't hold the slime in their bodies in its final form.”
Scientific American: Magical Mucus: On the Benefits of Getting Slimed by a Hagfish – “Of all the things I’ve dreamed of doing in my lifetime, being slimed by a hagfish was not on the list. But maybe it should have been because slime is incredibly cool stuff.”
Journal of Zoology Blog: Why so many species eat their snot – “This question first crossed my mind when I witnessed this behavior while filming an aye-aye at the Duke Lemur Center. I was disgusted and impressed at the same time as I watched Kali (let’s call her by her name) put the entire length of her really elongate third finger up her nostril.”
Wired: Blankets of Snot Protect Sleeping Reef Fish From Parasites – “Researchers had speculated that the reason certain parrot fish and wrasses envelop themselves each night with a big blob of mucus might be to protect against settling silt or to deter hungry predators such as moray eels. But definitive experiments were lacking. Now scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia have done the dirty work.”
Science News Explores: Sea sponges spew slow-motion snot rockets to clear out their pores -- It’s “like someone with a runny nose,” says team member Sally Leys. The sponge’s mucus is “constantly streaming.”
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Sharks use snot to hunt prey -- "The gel contains various proteins and salts, so it's similar to mucus, only with a [jelly-like] consistency. Basically, it's shark snot," says lead author Dr R Douglas Fields, chief of the Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section of the US National Institutes of Health.
Even if you enjoyed the articles above, I don’t recommend that you go down the Google rabbit hole of “mucus fishing.” Trust me on this one.
