LHSD - Little hagfish slime dress?

Hey everyone! I apologize for the lack of posts in the past few weeks. I have been sick, and no one is quite sure with what. I think that I am bringing you a pretty interesting post today though. One that shows how fashion and a "living fossil" are related.

From: http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/labs/biomaterials/slime.html

            There is a marine animal, which look like an eel, which is called the hagfish. It is a marine scavenger that loves dead whale. The hagfish is the only living animal that has a skull, but no vertebral column. It is a jawless animal, and a "living fossil" because the hagfish of today look nearly identical to the hagfish of 300 million years ago.

            One interesting thing that the hagfish does is that it secretes a mucus-y slime from its over 100 secretion glands. It does this if a predator has threatened it. The hagfish will produce massive amounts of slime and then tie itself in a simple knot, which effectively frees it from both the predator and the slime.

From the Vancouver aquarium 

            But enough about the hagfish and on to the news! Researchers are looking into creating fabrics out of natural resources because nylon, spandex, and several other fabrics come from oil, which is non-renewable. BBC news reported on a research group that believes that they can produce thread and eventually fabric from the slime of the hagfish. The threads within the hagfish's slime are super strong (they believe it could make fabrics that are as strong as nylon or plastics). Researchers believe that the hagfish has hundreds of kilometers of thread within each one.

From BBC article

            While hagfish produce large amounts of slime, researchers are looking more at how to replicate the threads instead of harvest it from the hagfish. Researchers have been able to replicate spider silk, but it takes some rather wonky processes due to the relatively large size of each thread. It is believed that the smaller threads within the hagfish slime would make it substantially easier to replicate.

            I sit here typing in a pair of bright yellow tights, and it kind of grosses me out to think of clothes made from spider silk or hagfish slime. In my mind, I imagine my legs wrapped in webs or covered in slime. It's not the most appealing of thoughts. I think that this use of oil is rarely thought about. I know that I don't generally think about my tights or my running leggings coming from oil. And as worried as our society is about the future lack of oil and the price of oil, it would be good to eliminate the use of petroleum in our clothing, and instead use renewable, natural options. Next year at Paris fashion week - Hagfish dresses? 

Discovery News article - here