Can a hagfish kill someone?

Question

You know by eating their innards =X

To greg:

hagfish enters fish through any hole they can find... (wikipedia)

Answer 1

No it can not but here is some information for you:

How can you tell a hagfish if you see one?

They look kind of like eels or lamprey, being long, slender and light pinkish grey in colour.
They are elegantly simple in design, having no fins (except for a primitive tail fin), knobby protrusions, and few accessories to speak of.
Their eyes are reduced but they have good senses of touch and smell.
They have a ring of short sensitive tentacles around their mouths.
Large slime glands line their sides along the length of their bodies.



What do they do?

For a long time, people thought of hagfish as scavengers and parasites, probably due to their habit or burrowing into dead or dying animals and eating them from the inside out. In fact, most of their diet is made up of marine worms and other invertebrates. Scientists used to think the hagfish looked primitive as a result of the loss of characteristics often associated with being a parasite. Now common belief is that hagfish just haven't needed to change for the last couple of hundred million years. Now that's a successful body plan and lifestyle!

Answer 2

Technically, yes. Hagfish enter both living and dead fish, feeding on the insides. While having no ability to enter through skin, they will often enter through current openings such as the mouth, gills or anus. So, if a person were unconscious or mentally incapacitated in some way and were around a body of water where a hagfish was living, it's possible that the hagfish could enter one of the person's orifices and eat away.

Answer 3

That's an interesting question,I'm sorry to say I don't know the answer. Seems like it would be difficult for the parasitic fish to get in undetected,however if it did,no telling what might happen.
Even more interesting would be a study of the Amazon parasitic catfishes of the family called "Candiru",the most famous member being the one that attaches itself in urinary tract. Although large Candiru have been found eating their way into or through some of the large food fishes in the Amazon Basin.
Might be a good study for a biology Master's thesis.

Answer 4

hagfish prefer dead fish. not humans. the only thing a hagfish can do to humans is gross them out with their mucous secreting defenses.

Answer 5

I think the slim from the fish would kill you long before you died from it eating you..
So in short you would suffocate from all the slim.

Answer 6

ha ha ha, It would make one hell of a tentacle porn though!