The serpentine body, the large mouth of the disc full of sharp teeth, and the blood-sucking properties similar to leeches, this is not a mutant creature in horror movies, but our protagonist today, the lamprey eel.
Lamprey
The vampire demon in the American horror film Blood Lake was based on it, but its figure is not much better.
When you search for images of lampreys, browsers go out of their way to warn you that "pictures may cause discomfort," and most horror movies don't have that treatment.
And there are rumors that a wealthy Roman named Vedius Pollio had a pool full of hungry lampreys and would throw incompetent servants or anyone he didn't like into it.
Whether this is true or not, it is clear that even back in antiquity, people have reason to fear attacks by lampreys.
But who would have thought that such a creature full of terrifying elements would once be eaten to extinction in Europe.
The distribution of lamprey eels is still relatively extensive, they live in temperate coastal and freshwater areas around the world except Africa, and there are many species, there are about 38 species of lamprey eels in existence, and there are 5 known extinct species.
They have well-developed eyes, a bare skin and no scales, a long dorsal fin on the back that extends backwards to the end of the tail and forms a tail fin around the tail, a nostril above the head, and seven gill holes on each side of the body, hence the name.
Lamprey eel body structure
Interestingly, in Japan, they are also known as eight-eyed eels because people mistake the gill holes on the sides for its eyes.
But the most distinctive feature is their jagged shower-like mouth, which is also its main blood-sucking tool.
The mouth of the lamprey eel
Lampreys have funnel-shaped suction cups on the anterior ventral surface of the head, which are round when opened, and there are many soft milky protrusions on the periphery of the wrinkled skin. The mouth is at the bottom of the funnel, and there are many sharp yellow teeth on both sides of the mouth. Through this suction cup-shaped mouth, they can be easily adsorbed to the surface of fish and marine mammals.
Once attached to the victim, the lamprey eel will continue to lick the host with its rough tongue and tear the host's epidermis with its sharp teeth. In addition, its laryngeal glands can secrete an anticoagulant that keeps the wound open so that the lamprey can continue to feed on the blood and tissue of its prey.
In rare cases, lampreys will specifically suck on a host until only the skeleton remains. But most of the time, because their metabolism is slow and they don't have a formed stomach, they eat two bites and run away.
So in the waters where the lampreys live, fishermen will often catch fish with round holes after being attacked, and even fish that still have lampreys attached to them.
Of course, not all lampreys depend on this cruel parasitic approach, and only 18 species of lampreys are now known to adopt this predatory lifestyle.
For example, the Lamprey of the American Stream is not dangerous to humans or fish. They are filter-feeding organisms, and when they reach adulthood, they no longer eat, relying on stored nutrients, and only live for a short time. But sea lampreys like sea lampreys are so ferocious that they can even mouth large creatures like sharks.
A hole in the fish's body that has been bitten by a lamprey
Although there have been incidents of lampreys attacking people in recent years, fortunately, humans are generally not on their menus.
However, the length of adult lampreys can reach 13 to 100 centimeters, so when you swim wildly, thinking about such a blood-sucking monster in the water, you are still a little uncomfortable.
Although it is called lamprey, it is not actually an eel, or even a fish. Existing vertebrates can be divided into jawless and jawed, and the five major groups of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals that we are familiar with belong to the jawed class.
Jawless creatures have no upper and lower jaws and are by far the most primitive aquatic fish-shaped vertebrates. However, only a few species of the hagfish suborder Myxini and The lamprey eel suborder Petromyzontida survive to this day.
The appearance of the lamprey eel can be traced back more than 530 million years, and is even known as the "prehistoric zombie fish".
Although lampreys have a long history on Earth, their fossils are still rare, and these eel-like fish are boneless, and their sharp teeth are unlikely to be preserved because they are made of keratin, just like our hair and nails.
In 2018, Alan Pipe, an archaeologist at the London Archaeological Museum, found rows of teeth that looked like lampreys near London's Official Residence station. Prior to this, only two lamprey remains had been found in Yorkshire and southern Scotland.
Fossil teeth of lamprey eels
Pipe said in a statement: "After 33 years of animal remains research, we have finally found traces of this elusive lamprey in the heart of the historic city of London. It is preserved on the waterlogged ground near the River Thames. It's really exciting. ”
The discovery has led archaeologists to believe that in the Middle Ages it was a fairly wealthy area, as lampreys have been a favorite of wealthy and powerful people for centuries.
Yes, such a hideous creature has always been considered a delicacy in Europe, and certainly not the lamprey eel choir package you might think:
Sevengill eel choir
The lamprey, which is made into a delicacy, actually sells quite well. However, there is a saying that the lamprey eel has only cartilage and no hard spines on the whole body, and the fish meat is full of elasticity and delicate taste. And it contains enough fat, protein and vitamin A, and the nutrition is still quite rich.
It is said that "Game of Thrones" is actually a "table of power", and the original novel can be described as a proper "European medieval food list", and the lamprey naturally occupies a place.
Most members of the British royal family are particularly fond of lamprey eels. The city of Gloucester, as a sign of loyalty to the royal family, presents the lamprey to the monarch every Christmas.
Lamprey eel pie
King Henry I of England (1068-1135) was known for his gluttonous consumption of lamprey eels. Charles Dickens, in his novel A Child's History of England, describes henry I, 67, dying on the toilet due to indigestion and fever during his tour of Normandy, despite doctors' advice to "overdose the lamprey.".
A fictional portrait of Henry I painted in the History of England
Although the authenticity of the story is often questioned, many later kings were not "intimidated" by it. A "holy decree" during the reign of John I (1167-1216) states that after eating lamprey, the king and queen felt that all other fish were tasteless.
So they demanded that the sheriff of Gloucester should buy or otherwise buy as many lampreys as possible in the precinct, and then put it in bread and jelly and give it to the king's cook.
According to the Royal Cookbook, John I also fined the city of Gloucester 40 marks (equivalent to £250,000 now) for "not giving him enough respect for the issue of lamprey eels".
To this day, the lamprey still maintains its royal status. In 1953, the inhabitants of Gloucester returned to their traditional roles, producing a special lamprey eel pie for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and more lamprey eel pie at later 25th and 50th anniversary celebrations.
In June 2012, in preparation for the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, the Diamond Jubilee, the lamprey in local waters was nearly disappeared due to overfishing, river pollution, new dam construction and other reasons, and Gloucester had to import lamprey eels from the Great Lakes of North America. Two pounds of slimy, frozen lamprey were transported to Gloucester.
Sarrah Maccey of the Gloucester Folk Museum made the pie for the Queen at the time. She considered a variety of ancient cooking methods, one of which was first cooked with wine, vinegar, cinnamon and lamprey blood.
Interestingly eels are considered a delicacy in Europe, but in North America they are a major invasive species that harms the local economy. In the 1920s, sea lampreys entered the Great Lakes through the Atlantic Shipping Canal and have been threatening local fish ever since.
As we mentioned above, sharks are also "predators" in the list of sea lampreys. They attach themselves to important economic fish such as native trout and salmon in the Great Lakes and suck out all their offal. This is a serious problem in a region where the fishing industry is worth billions of dollars.
It's no wonder that Mark Gaden, a spokesman for the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, even said: "We prefer to send them a truckload of lamprey eels." So when the lampreys re-energize in The Rivers of Britain in 2015, people in North America may be puzzled by the euphoria of the British.
In order to protect the local lamprey resources, the British environmental organization has also been working hard, they have re-introduced the lamprey into the Derwent River, the Great Wus River and other rivers, and removed some artificial obstacles to facilitate their free movement.
In addition to Europe, Japan and South Korea and other countries have the habit of eating lamprey. Japanese people treat lamprey as religiously as they do with eels, and common practices include kaki yaki and white yaki.
Burnt lamprey
In addition to diet, lampreys also have a unique position in evolution, including humans, vertebrates, in fact, from primitive fish similar to lampreys. It now appears to be the Xenophoric lamprey, and hundreds of millions of years ago, their form was the mainstream.
Researchers mapped the map of The Mathon Creek riverbed in Illinois 300 million years ago
The earliest vertebrates on Earth did not have upper and lower jaws, and they flourished in number. With the evolution of life, these "jawless" animals are now almost extinct, leaving only some species of the hagfish suborder and the lamprey eel suborder.
For a long time, these primitive forms have not changed. South Africa has found a 360 million-year-old lamprey fossil, almost identical to today's lamprey.
fossil
But that doesn't mean that lampreys were once our ancestors, and the common ancestors of lampreys and hagfish may have parted ways with our ancient ancestors 500 million years ago. But the lamprey eel still gives us clues to study the origins of the earliest vertebrates.
Our original direct ancestor may have been similar to the lamprey eel, and some of its features later developed into structures such as the upper and lower jaws and limbs. And because the adaptive immune system of lamprey eels has a certain particularity, the study of them provides valuable insights into the evolution of adaptive immunity in vertebrates.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, after studying the lamprey brain, concluded that the basic structure of the human brain was determined before the lamprey separated from the evolutionary route of mammals and humans. This study pushed the birth of the cerebral cortex from 300 million years ago to 500 million years ago.
The various studies above tell us that when talking about the evolutionary history of humans, both lampreys and chimpanzees can tell us something about our ancestors, although they have followed a different evolutionary path than we have.
In addition, researchers have found that there are some genes related to human neurological disorders in the genome of lamprey eels, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and so on. This means that lamprey eels can serve as ideal organisms to study the pathogenic mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and neurological disorders in humans.
In this way, although the appearance of the lamprey is very scary, the predatory behavior is very uncomfortable, but it is friendly to human taste buds and also plays an important role in life research.
The side face of the lamprey eel is also quite OK
So what would the meat of ancient creatures taste like? A lamprey that has barely changed in 360 million years will know.
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Explore the lamprey eel: Vertebrates, including humans, evolved from primitive fish resembling lamprey eels. Mysterious Earth . 2015.11.6.