Dr. Pox's Medical Mysteries

Dr. Pox's Medical Mysteries 🩺🕯 Welcome to Dr. Pox’s Medical Mysteries! Step into the strange, macabre, and wonderfully bizarre world of medical, natural, and science history. Unsettling.

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🤢 Would you drink a mixture containing human f***s if an ancient physician believed it might save you from deadly diarrh...
08/23/2026

🤢 Would you drink a mixture containing human f***s if an ancient physician believed it might save you from deadly diarrhea or food poisoning?

🥣 “Yellow Soup”: Ancient China’s Early F***l Transplant Treatment

More than 1,700 years before scientists understood bacteria or the gut microbiome, Chinese medical writings described giving sick patients liquids prepared from human f***l material.

The treatment is frequently called “yellow soup” and is often presented as the earliest known ancestor of f***l microbiota transplantation. However, the ancient remedies were not identical to modern FMT, and some details have become blurred through centuries of copying, translation and retelling.

Here are 10 verified facts about one of medical history’s most stomach-turning treatments:

📜 1. The treatment is strongly associated with the fourth-century scholar Ge Hong.
Ge Hong was an Eastern Jin physician, Daoist scholar and alchemist who compiled an emergency medical formulary now known as Zhouhou Beiji Fang, often translated as Emergency Formulas to Keep on Hand. The work was intended to preserve relatively accessible treatments for urgent illnesses.

🤮 2. His medical text described f***l preparations for severe digestive illness and poisoning.
Modern historical reviews report that Ge Hong described administering human f***l suspensions for serious conditions including severe diarrhea, food poisoning and certain febrile illnesses. The material entered the patient through the digestive tract rather than being injected into the bloodstream.

🥄 3. Patients were expected to swallow the preparation.
Unlike many modern microbiota treatments delivered into the lower intestine, the ancient liquid was taken by mouth. Historical summaries describe f***l matter being diluted or suspended in liquid to create a drinkable—although undoubtedly unpleasant—medicine.

🐉 4. “Yellow soup” is a convenient label, but the historical terminology is complicated.
Ge Hong’s text has been associated with a preparation called Huanglong Tang, commonly translated as “Yellow Dragon Decoction.” Over later centuries, Chinese f***l medicines appeared under several names and were prepared in different ways, so not every ancient f***l remedy should be treated as one standardized recipe.

🧪 5. Historical preparations could involve fresh, dried or fermented f***l material.
Different medical writings describe liquids made from fresh f***s as well as preparations that had been aged or fermented. Ge Hong’s surviving textual tradition includes a recommendation that one preparation was better when aged, but later retellings do not always distinguish clearly between these recipes.

🦠 6. Ancient physicians did not understand bacteria or the microbiome.
Ge Hong lived roughly 1,500 years before germ theory became established. He could not have known that human intestines contain complex microbial communities or that transferring microorganisms might alter disease. Any similarity to modern microbiome therapy was practical rather than based on modern biological knowledge.

📊 7. Historical claims of dramatic recovery were not clinical-trial evidence.
Ancient texts and later summaries describe severely ill patients recovering after receiving f***l preparations, but there were no control groups, laboratory testing or standardized diagnoses. It is therefore impossible to determine how often the treatment worked—or whether reported recoveries were caused by the f***l material itself.

🏺 8. Later Chinese physicians developed a far more elaborate product called Jinzhi.
By the Ming period, some texts described filtering human f***s through cloth and soil, collecting the liquid in a sealed container and fermenting it underground for a year or longer. The resulting upper layer was described as a clearer yellowish liquid, making it substantially different from a simple fresh f***l slurry.

🔬 9. Modern f***l microbiota treatment is carefully processed and medically supervised.
Contemporary microbiota therapy uses material or microorganisms from screened donors to help restore a disrupted intestinal microbial community. Depending on the product and procedure, it may be administered through the lower gastrointestinal tract or in specially manufactured oral capsules—not served as unprocessed “soup.”

⚠️ 10. Attempting a homemade version can transmit dangerous infections.
Modern donor screening and laboratory testing are essential because f***l material can contain harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites and antibiotic-resistant organisms. The FDA has documented serious infections and deaths associated with pathogen transmission through inadequately controlled f***l microbiota products.

⚕️ The Dr. Pox Takeaway:
Ge Hong’s f***l remedies were not modern FMT performed centuries ahead of schedule. They lacked donor screening, microbial testing, standardized manufacturing and a scientific understanding of why transferring intestinal material might affect disease.

Nevertheless, the ancient accounts demonstrate that physicians noticed a possible connection between material from a healthy digestive system and recovery from severe intestinal illness long before anyone could see a bacterium. Modern microbiome medicine did not emerge directly from “yellow soup,” but the resemblance remains one of medical history’s most fascinating—and disgusting—coincidences.

🗣️ Had you been dying from severe diarrhea in ancient China, would desperation have convinced you to drink the mysterious yellow medicine?

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🥛 Would you allow a doctor to inject cow’s milk directly into your veins if they claimed it could replace lost blood?🩸 M...
08/22/2026

🥛 Would you allow a doctor to inject cow’s milk directly into your veins if they claimed it could replace lost blood?

🩸 Milk Transfusions: The Attempt to Replace Human Blood with Cow’s Milk

Before physicians understood blood groups, immune compatibility or the specialized functions of blood cells, transfusion was unpredictable and dangerous. During the 19th century, some doctors searched for an inexpensive substitute that would not clot inside their equipment or require a human donor.

For a brief and bizarre period, they believed the answer might be fresh milk.

Here are 10 verified facts about one of transfusion medicine’s strangest experiments:

🇨🇦 1. The first documented human milk transfusions were performed during a cholera epidemic in Toronto.
In July 1854, physicians James Bovell and Edwin Hodder injected cow’s milk into patients suffering from severe cholera. Bovell published a short account of the experiments the following year.

🦠 2. Cholera patients were chosen because the disease could cause catastrophic fluid loss.
Severe vomiting and diarrhea left patients profoundly dehydrated and close to death. The physicians hoped that introducing milk directly into the circulation might replace lost fluid while also providing material from which the body could rebuild damaged blood.

🔬 3. Doctors believed milk fat might be transformed into white blood cells.
Nineteenth-century microscopy had revealed small globules suspended in milk. Some investigators proposed that these oily particles could enter the bloodstream and become “white corpuscles,” the term then used for white blood cells. That idea was biologically incorrect.

🥣 4. Milk also seemed similar to a natural fluid called chyle.
Chyle is a milky-looking lymphatic fluid containing absorbed dietary fats that naturally enters the circulation. Physician T. Gaillard Thomas argued that because both chyle and milk contained finely divided fat, injecting milk into a vein might imitate a normal bodily process. The resemblance in appearance did not make the two fluids medically interchangeable.

🐄 5. Fresh milk could be taken from a cow and injected while it was still warm.
Historical accounts describe the first Toronto patient receiving approximately 12 ounces of warmed cow’s milk intravenously. Doctors sometimes emphasized using freshly drawn milk because they feared spoilage and contamination, although freshness could not make ordinary milk safe for intravenous use.

📈 6. Early reports of apparent improvement helped the idea survive.
The first Toronto patients were reported to have rallied following the procedure, encouraging physicians to interpret the treatment as successful. These were uncontrolled emergency cases involving critically ill people, so temporary improvement could not establish that the milk had caused their recovery. Later patients experienced far worse outcomes.

🇺🇸 7. Milk transfusion became especially fashionable in the United States between 1873 and 1880.
After nearly two decades of limited interest, American physicians revived the procedure. Cow, goat and even human milk were tried as substitutes for blood during this short period of enthusiasm.

🏥 8. Doctors used it for far more than blood loss.
Historical reports describe intravenous milk being administered to patients with severe anemia, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, surgical hemorrhage, chronic exhaustion and other life-threatening conditions. Some physicians considered it both a volume replacement and a form of nourishment that bypassed the digestive system.

😰 9. Patients could experience frightening reactions during the infusion.
Recorded effects included facial flushing, chills, fever, headache, chest discomfort, breathing difficulty, abnormal eye movements, agitation and loss of consciousness. Deaths occurred, although many recipients were already critically ill, making the precise contribution of the milk difficult to determine from the historical reports. Modern accidental intravenous milk administration can cause anaphylaxis, pulmonary microemboli, kidney injury, infection, thrombosis and multiorgan failure.

🐕 10. Animal experiments revealed that milk could obstruct and injure the circulation.
Researchers observed milk-fat globules collecting where small blood vessels divided. Dogs given large injections lost weight, developed hemorrhagic areas in their lungs and died, while other experiments showed that decomposed milk was particularly lethal. These findings directly challenged the belief that milk simply blended harmlessly with blood.

🧂 By 1884, saline solutions were replacing milk as an emergency fluid substitute.
Physicians increasingly recognized the frequency of dangerous reactions to milk. Saline could help restore circulating fluid volume without introducing milk proteins, fat globules and other particles into the bloodstream. Later discoveries—including Karl Landsteiner’s identification of the major human blood groups in 1901—helped make actual human blood transfusion far safer and more scientifically grounded.

⚕️ The Dr. Pox Takeaway:
Milk may be nutritious inside the digestive system, but a vein is not an alternative route to the stomach. Milk contains no red blood cells or hemoglobin, so it cannot perform blood’s essential job of transporting oxygen throughout the body. Its fats, proteins, microorganisms and insoluble particles can instead provoke severe immune reactions, infections and blockages within the circulation.

Milk transfusion arose from a combination of desperation, incomplete knowledge and superficially persuasive reasoning. Milk looked like chyle, contained tiny globules and was widely available—but biological resemblance is not proof of medical compatibility.

🗣️ What shocks you most: the idea that milk could become white blood cells, the quantity injected or the fact that the practice remained popular despite alarming reactions?

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Hey ! I have a super exciting announcement! Dr. Pox has grown to the point where Facebook has decided that I qualify for...
08/21/2026

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08/21/2026

🩺🕰️ Dr. Pox’s Medical Mysteries — This Day in History 8/21

On this day in history, science and medicine took some fascinating — and sometimes unsettling — turns.

From groundbreaking discoveries to bizarre experiments and forgotten firsts, today’s date holds more medical mystery than you might expect.

Swipe through time, question what we thought we knew, and remember — today’s “routine medicine” was once unimaginable.

🧪 Stay curious.
🦠 Stay skeptical.
🕯️ History is watching.

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🌊 Imagine being pulled unconscious from a river—only for rescuers to place a tube into your re**um and pump to***co smok...
08/21/2026

🌊 Imagine being pulled unconscious from a river—only for rescuers to place a tube into your re**um and pump to***co smoke inside you. Would you have believed it could save your life?

🚬 To***co Smoke Enemas: Blowing Smoke to Revive the Drowned

During the 18th century, European physicians and rescue organizations experimented with numerous methods for reviving people who appeared to have drowned. One of the strangest involved forcing warm to***co smoke into the re**um using a pipe or specially designed bellows.

The procedure sounds absurd today, but it formed part of a serious early movement to prove that apparent death did not always have to be permanent.

Here are 10 verified facts about one of resuscitation history’s most bizarre treatments:

🌫️ 1. To***co smoke e***as became a recognized drowning treatment during the 1700s.
Re**al to***co insufflation was widely promoted in Europe during the second half of the 18th century. Practitioners treated people who were described as “apparently drowned”—meaning they showed no obvious signs of life but might still have been capable of recovery.

🏛️ 2. One of the treatment’s greatest supporters became the Royal Humane Society.
London physicians William Hawes and Thomas Cogan founded the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned in 1774. The organization was later renamed the Royal Humane Society and helped turn resuscitation from an occasional curiosity into an organized public-health effort.

🧰 3. Resuscitation kits were positioned along the River Thames.
The society distributed portable equipment near locations where drowning emergencies were likely. Surviving kits contain bellows, a to***co fumigator, syringes, flexible tubes and nozzles designed for the mouth, nose, stomach, airway and re**um.

🔥 4. The to***co was burned inside a specialized chamber.
Smoke produced in the fumigator was pushed through tubing by a set of bellows. A re**al nozzle delivered the smoke into the victim’s bowel, allowing rescuers to administer repeated puffs without relying entirely on their own breath.

😷 5. Earlier versions could require a rescuer to blow through an ordinary pipe.
Before bellows became common, a rescuer might connect a smoking pipe to a re**al tube and blow directly into it. This exposed the rescuer to the possibility of inhaling contaminated material if air or fluid traveled backward through the apparatus. Bellows reduced that particular danger, although they did not make the treatment effective or safe for the patient.

🌡️ 6. Physicians believed the smoke would provide warmth and stimulation.
Medical thinking still drew heavily on the theory of the four humors. Drowning victims were viewed as unnaturally cold, wet and overwhelmed by phlegm, so warm, dry to***co smoke seemed like a logical countermeasure. To***co was also considered a powerful irritant capable of stimulating the heart, breathing and nervous system.

🫁 7. The e***a was usually only one part of a much larger rescue attempt.
Historical resuscitation instructions could also include warming the body, rubbing the limbs, inflating the lungs with bellows, administering stimulants into the stomach, shaking the patient, bloodletting or hanging the body at an angle to drain water. Some methods were potentially helpful, while others were useless or actively dangerous.

📊 8. Reports of successful revivals did not prove that the smoke caused the recovery.
The people involved were generally described as apparently dead rather than confirmed dead, and several interventions were often performed together. Consequently, a person who resumed breathing might have recovered because of ventilation, warming, spontaneous recovery or another measure—not because to***co smoke entered the re**um. This is an inference from how the historical cases and combined treatments were recorded; controlled evidence establishing a benefit never existed.

🪶 9. The frequently repeated story of a Native American origin is historically uncertain.
Many museum and medical-history accounts state that Europeans learned to***co smoke e***as from Indigenous peoples of North America. However, a 2026 historical review found that the earlier authors commonly cited as evidence discussed Indigenous to***co medicine without actually documenting re**al to***co-smoke resuscitation. The practice’s precise origin therefore remains less certain than popular retellings suggest.

☠️ 10. Recognition of to***co’s toxicity helped end the practice.
Doubts about the treatment were already appearing during the 1780s. In 1811, surgeon Benjamin Collins Brodie published animal experiments examining how vegetable poisons—including to***co—could stop vital functions. To***co smoke e***as subsequently declined, and the re**al method had largely fallen from professional favor by the late 1830s.

💬 Bonus fact: the famous modern expression may not come from this treatment.
The claim that “blowing smoke up someone’s ass” originated with to***co e***as is often repeated online. Language historians have noted that the expression appeared much later and may instead derive from older slang connecting smoke with boasting, deception or insincere flattery. A direct historical link to the medical procedure has not been established.

⚕️ The Dr. Pox Takeaway:
To***co smoke e***as were ineffective and potentially toxic, but the people who placed the kits beside the Thames were attempting something genuinely revolutionary: treating apparent death as a medical emergency rather than an irreversible act of fate.

Their equipment was misguided, yet the organizations behind it promoted rapid rescue, portable emergency supplies, public training and the careful recording of resuscitation attempts. Those ideas helped prepare the way for modern emergency medicine.

Today, a person removed from the water who is unconscious and not breathing normally needs emergency assistance and CPR. Current drowning guidance emphasizes chest compressions together with rescue breaths when the rescuer is trained and able—not smoke, stimulants or attempts to drain water from the lungs.

🗣️ What shocks you most: the re**al smoke itself, the elaborate kits positioned beside the Thames or the fact that this was once considered a serious lifesaving treatment?

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🌑 Which survival trick sounds stranger: becoming nearly invisible in the deep ocean—or hiding a glowing meal inside a bl...
08/20/2026

🌑 Which survival trick sounds stranger: becoming nearly invisible in the deep ocean—or hiding a glowing meal inside a blood-red stomach?

🩸 The Bloody-Belly Comb Jelly That Hides Its Glowing Meals

The bloody-belly comb jelly, Lampocteis cruentiventer, drifts through the dark ocean with a translucent body, shimmering rows of cilia and a stomach colored an intense crimson.

That red belly is not merely decorative. Many deep-sea animals produce their own light, so swallowing luminous prey could expose a transparent predator from the inside. The bloody-belly’s dark-red digestive system may prevent its latest meal from becoming a glowing advertisement for larger hunters.

Here are 10 verified facts about one of the deep sea’s most brilliantly disguised predators:

🪼 1. The bloody-belly comb jelly is not a true jellyfish.
It is a ctenophore, or comb jelly, belonging to an entirely separate animal phylum called Ctenophora. Unlike true jellyfish, comb jellies generally capture prey using adhesive cells called colloblasts rather than venomous stinging cells.

🔬 2. Scientists first collected the species in 1979.
The earliest known specimen was collected off Southern California near San Diego. Researchers later collected and studied additional animals in Monterey Bay between 1991 and 1999 before formally describing the species in 2001.

🧬 3. Its anatomy was unusual enough to justify an entirely new family.
Researchers found distinctive internal canals, a deep notch in the body and a heavily pigmented digestive structure unlike those of previously described lobate comb jellies. They created the genus Lampocteis and the family Lampoctenidae to classify it.

📖 4. Its scientific name describes its spectacular appearance.
The genus name Lampocteis comes from Greek roots meaning approximately “brilliant comb,” referring to its intensely iridescent comb rows. The species name cruentiventer refers to its blood-red belly.

🌊 5. It lives hundreds of meters beneath the ocean’s surface.
Monterey Bay Aquarium records place the species in deep midwater habitats approximately 400 to 1,000 meters—about 1,200 to 3,280 feet—below the surface. Animals observed there can grow to roughly 15 centimeters, or six inches, long.

⚫ 6. Its bright-red pigmentation functions as deep-sea camouflage.
Red wavelengths are absorbed relatively quickly as sunlight penetrates seawater. At the depths inhabited by the comb jelly, little or no red light remains to reflect from its body, causing the vivid crimson animal to appear dark or nearly black.

✨ 7. The red stomach may conceal bioluminescent prey.
Many creatures living in the deep ocean can generate light. Because the bloody-belly’s body is partly transparent, an uncovered glowing meal could reveal its position. Scientists believe the intensely pigmented stomach absorbs or blocks that light, hiding the prey from other predators watching nearby.

❓ 8. Scientists still do not know exactly what the species normally eats.
Its red digestive system strongly suggests an adaptation for concealing luminous prey, but Monterey Bay Aquarium currently lists its specific diet as unknown. The glowing-meal explanation is therefore a well-supported biological interpretation—not proof that every meal it consumes produces light.

🌈 9. The bloody-belly itself is not known to be bioluminescent.
The rainbowlike flashes along its body are produced when external light is diffracted and refracted by moving cilia. The optical shimmer is commonly mistaken for light generated through a chemical reaction, but the animal is reflecting and separating available light rather than creating the rainbow glow itself.

🚣 10. Eight rows of beating cilia propel it through the water.
Comb jellies do not swim by pulsing a muscular bell like true jellyfish. Their namesake combs consist of plates formed from fused hairlike cilia. Waves of coordinated movement pass along eight rows, gently rowing the animal through the ocean.

🤖 ROVs have been essential for studying this delicate animal.
Remotely operated vehicles allow scientists to observe and collect fragile comb jellies without destroying their gelatinous bodies in ordinary nets. Monterey Bay Aquarium later became the first aquarium in the United States to display Lampocteis and extended its survival under human care by reducing oxygen levels to resemble its deep-water habitat.

⚕️ The Dr. Pox Takeaway:
The bloody-belly comb jelly does not possess a stomach filled with actual blood, nor does its body shine like a lamp in its natural habitat. Its shocking crimson color performs the opposite function: it helps the animal disappear.

By hiding both its own body and the possible glow of recently swallowed prey, this transparent predator turns one of the ocean’s brightest colors into a cloak of darkness.

🗣️ What amazes you most: the stomach that hides glowing prey, the rainbow cilia that do not produce light or the bright-red animal that appears black in its natural habitat?

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08/19/2026

🩺🕰️ Dr. Pox’s Medical Mysteries — This Day in History 8/19

On this day in history, science and medicine took some fascinating — and sometimes unsettling — turns.

From groundbreaking discoveries to bizarre experiments and forgotten firsts, today’s date holds more medical mystery than you might expect.

Swipe through time, question what we thought we knew, and remember — today’s “routine medicine” was once unimaginable.

🧪 Stay curious.
🦠 Stay skeptical.
🕯️ History is watching.

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🫧 What would make you release your prey faster: sharp teeth, venom—or a sudden cloud of slime clogging your mouth and gi...
08/19/2026

🫧 What would make you release your prey faster: sharp teeth, venom—or a sudden cloud of slime clogging your mouth and gills?

🌊 Hagfish and Their Instant Ocean of Slime

When threatened, a hagfish can release a small quantity of concentrated material that rapidly mixes with seawater and expands into a huge cloud of soft, fibrous slime.

The animal does not carry gallons of finished slime inside its body. Instead, it uses microscopic protein threads and mucus to capture the surrounding seawater—creating one of nature’s fastest and strangest defensive materials.

Here are 10 verified facts about the hagfish’s instant ocean of slime:

🐟 1. Hagfish are jawless marine vertebrates—not true eels.
Their long, flexible bodies have earned them the nickname “slime eels,” but hagfish belong to an ancient group called Myxini. They lack jaws and instead use movable plates bearing keratinous toothlike structures to grip food.

🕳️ 2. Slime-producing structures extend along both sides of the body.
Depending on the species, a hagfish may possess approximately 90 to 200 external slime pores associated with glands running from near the head toward the tail. When part of the animal is attacked, nearby glands can discharge their contents directly toward the predator.

🧬 3. Two specialized types of cells create the slime.
Gland mucus cells contain packages of mucin, while gland thread cells contain tightly coiled protein fibers. The hagfish forcefully ejects both cell types into seawater, where the cells rupture and release their contents.

⚡ 4. The complete slime network can form in less than four-tenths of a second.
Within approximately 400 milliseconds, the coiled threads unravel, mucus components expand and the developing network captures seawater. This gives the hagfish a nearly instantaneous defense when seized by a fast-moving predator.

🪣 5. A single stimulation can create far more slime than the hagfish’s body volume.
Researchers reported that pinching the tail of an adult Pacific hagfish about 45 centimeters long produced approximately 0.9 liters of slime—around seven times the animal’s own volume. This enormous output is possible because almost all the finished material comes from the surrounding water.

💧 6. Fully expanded hagfish slime is more than 99.9% seawater.
The slime is better understood as a temporary microscopic sieve than as a bucket of ordinary mucus. Mucin-coated threads create a delicate three-dimensional network that traps and slows water without permanently binding it.

🧵 7. Individual slime threads can be approximately 15 centimeters long.
Each astonishingly long fiber is stored as a tightly packed coil inside a microscopic gland thread cell. The deployed threads taper from roughly three micrometers near the middle to around one micrometer near their ends and are long enough to cross much of a slime cloud.

🦈 8. The defense has been filmed repelling sharks and large bony fishes.
In field recordings, predators that grabbed hagfish received jets of slime directly into their mouths and gill chambers. The attackers gagged, moved their gill arches violently and released the hagfish, which frequently appeared uninjured and resumed feeding. Researchers documented 14 clear repulsion events involving several kinds of predatory fish.

🫁 9. The slime disrupts water flow through a predator’s gills.
It does not need to be poisonous or glue the gills permanently shut. The fibrous network traps water, interferes with respiratory flow and provokes an urgent attempt to clear the mouth and gill chamber. Scientists do not claim that every affected predator suffocates—the immediate goal is to force it to release the hagfish.

🔄 10. The slime becomes thicker in one type of flow and easier to remove in another.
Experiments found that hagfish slime resists stretching and elongational flow, which may help it obstruct suction-feeding predators. Under shearing forces, however, the structure thins and collapses more easily. This allows the hagfish to tie its flexible body into a sliding knot and scrape the slime from itself before it becomes trapped in its own defense.

⚕️ The Dr. Pox Takeaway:
A hagfish does not simply sq**rt out a reservoir of sticky mucus. It releases the ingredients for an ultrafast, water-capturing structure composed of microscopic mucins and enormously long protein threads.

The resulting slime can overwhelm a predator’s gills almost instantly—yet it is temporary enough for the hagfish to wipe away by pulling its own body through a knot.

Researchers continue studying this remarkable material for inspiration in creating deployable fibers, water-rich hydrogels and other biomimetic materials.

🗣️ What amazes you most: the slime forming in under half a second, the 15-centimeter threads packed inside microscopic cells or the hagfish tying itself in a knot to escape its own creation?

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