sea lamper is usually attached to larger fish in the ocean to feed but recently it seems they've begun to attack swimmers too who've dared to venture into the Lakes deeper waters Dr Ellen maren has become a specialist in these resilient blood suckers which are commonly confused with eels but this is by far the most ancient river monster I've ever attempted to catch seeing eel and lamp side by side the difference starts to become clear this is a true vertebrate this is this is a Proto vertebrate it's just in the process becoming a vertebrate it doesn't
have a bony backbone it has no bones in the body at all um and it's so primitive it doesn't even have a true jaw it has no lower mandible it can't bite um whereas an eel has a true jaw and can can actually bite into something so it's a fish but it's the very beginning of the fish lineage around 300 million years of evolution separate these two animals in fact we have more in common with the eel than the eel does with the lampri so the predation is all about this this structure on the front
is it right and it's rather deceptive because you think wow all those teeth they they are teeth but not in the way we think of them they're not to bite these are just grippers um it's like having gripper gloves to be able to grab something that's slimy um the thing that does the damage is actually down here in the mouth itself so it has a tongue much much like the eel has a tongue and on that tongue are chisel like teeth so this tongue is acting like a piston it's going to come out and actually
it rasps a hole in a fish and again it can't bite so having rasped a hole into the fish it's then going to use suction to suck body fluids blood and other material out of that hole that it's just made the next image that I saw when I put my goggles in was snake like with my last ounce of energy I heave it in close and then only once
