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Lamprey — printable fact sheet
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Lamprey
Petromyzon marinus
Lampreys are jawless fish - agnathans - and along with hagfish they are the only survivors of a body plan that dominated the seas before jaws evolved. They have no jaws, no paired fins, no bones, and a skeleton of cartilage; the mouth is a round sucking disc lined with rings of …
Did you know?
- Lampreys are among the few vertebrates that can regenerate spinal cord tissue after injury.
- A single sea lamprey can kill about 18 kg of fish during its 12 to 18 months of parasitic feeding, and at the peak of the Great Lakes invasion only a fraction of attacked fish survived. Lampreys have two dorsal fins, a single nostril on top of the head, and a pineal eye beneath the skin that detects light. Their immune system is fundamentally different from ours - it uses variable lymphocyte receptors instead of antibodies - which makes them enormously valuable in immunology research.
What I learned
Draw the lamprey
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