Oregon Slime Eel Crash

[Yazata]

Were these yours, MR??

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northw...rns_o.html

Count on California's neighbors to the north (no, not the Canadians, but yeah, them too) to be weird.

It seems that an Oregon truck full of hagfish, otherwise known as slime-eels (for obvious reasons) or snot-snakes, overturned and released tons of these early-days-of-evolution babies on to highway 101 (the coastal road in OR) and into a sedan that got totally slimed. These things have glands that produce huge amounts of slime when the animals are agitated or alarmed, and the crash definitely agitated and alarmed them. So the whole highway got covered in slime. They've evolved to make every other kind of animal go "Eewww!" and in that way to keep from being eaten. Except Koreans who love to eat them and this shipment was headed to its ultimate fate in Korea.  

This video should serve as a warning of what eating too many slime eels can do to otherwise normal human beings.

They are actually pretty interesting biologically. They are surviving examples of very early jawless fish, like lampreys but more primitive. They don't have hard bones. They seem to suggest how chordates may have originally emerged from worm-like ancestors. Just think - we are all descended from things like this! They are back there in all of our family trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostomata

[Image: f378553683d72bb3e3b011bb5f2b9831.jpg]

[Magical Realist]

That was me in disguise with face paint and a bushy fake mustache working for an underground eel smuggling ring out of Depot Bay. My life is now in jeopardy as I am being hunted down by the Korean hagfish cartel. These thugs are incredibly bloodthirsty and ruthless. I'm in hiding now. Don't contact me.

[Yazata]

[Image: eels1.jpg]

[Zinjanthropos]

Confucius say: If old hag fishes along Oregon road then car goes on slippery highway.

[Magical Realist]

Reminds me of last year when I spilt a vat of boiled okra out of that same pickup all over 101. Okra smuggling is also a little known underground racket...