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Have you ever seen or come across an animal and thought to yourself how does this still exist? I had this thought when I first learned about the lamprey, an ancient eel looking, jawless fish who's species has been around for over 360 million years.
That makes them older than both dinosaurs and trees, of course I don't mean all plants or tree like plants but what is considered as a true trees.
Here's a YouTube Video of the creature, now when you're done watching, imagine it as a giant, wouldn't that fit perfectly into a monster or alien movie?
Imagine you're swimming and something like that glides past you with a round mouth that has a suction cup and tiny teeth inside the mouth that look like they are arranged in a circle, like a zipper. It would be absolutely creepy but some do have the courage to touch them.
Lampreys do not have jaws or bones, only cartilage and instincts that have allowed them to survive so many mass extinctions. When you put that into perspective, you start to wonder just how fragile we human beings are compared to the sea lampreys.
The lampreys are not all the same. Certain types of lampreys attach themselves to fish as parasites and suck their blood and body fluids. It's incredibly brutal for the fish that they are attached to, and it is a pretty intense way of survival.
There are other species of lampreys like mostly the adults, who do not eat anything at all, they just swim upstream to breed. For species like the brook lamprey which is a non parasitic type, they live off stored reserves, migrate upstream to breed and die.
Where would you see one? Usually in rivers, oceans and also different species are in different environments. They may look strange when you haven't seen them before, but to them, we're the strangers.
