Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 169 Tory Street, Wellington, New Zealand.
Sci Rep. 2011;1:131. doi: 10.1038/srep00131. Epub 2011 Oct 27.
Hagfishes (Myxinidae), a family of jawless marine pre-vertebrates, hold a unique evolutionary position, sharing a joint ancestor with the entire vertebrate lineage. They are thought to fulfil primarily the ecological niche of scavengers in the deep ocean. However, we present new footage from baited video cameras that captured images of hagfishes actively preying on other fish. Video images also revealed that hagfishes are able to choke their would-be predators with gill-clogging slime. This is the first time that predatory behaviour has been witnessed in this family, and also demonstrates the instantaneous effectiveness of hagfish slime to deter fish predators. These observations suggest that the functional adaptations and ecological role of hagfishes, past and present, might be far more diverse than previously assumed. We propose that the enduring success of this oldest extant family of fishes over 300 million years could largely be due to their unique combination of functional traits.
八目鳗（Myxinidae），一种无颚海洋前脊椎动物，拥有独特的进化地位，与整个脊椎动物谱系共享一个共同的祖先。它们被认为主要在深海中充当食腐动物的生态位。然而，我们展示了新的诱饵摄像机拍摄到的八目鳗主动捕食其他鱼类的镜头。视频图像还显示，八目鳗能够用堵塞鳃的黏液使潜在的捕食者窒息。这是首次在该科观察到捕食行为，也证明了八目鳗黏液立即阻止鱼类捕食者的有效性。这些观察结果表明，八目鳗过去和现在的功能适应和生态角色可能比以前假设的更加多样化。我们提出，这个现存最古老的鱼类家族在 3 亿多年的时间里持续成功，很大程度上是由于它们独特的功能特征组合。
