lamprey
灯鱼,灯笼鱼,灯草,灯笼草
Definitions
- 1
plural lam·preys.
- : any eellike marine or freshwater fish of the order Petromyzoniformes, having a circular, suctorial mouth with horny teeth for boring into the flesh of other fishes to feed on their blood.
Examples
Margaret Docker, an expert on lamprey biology and genetics at the University of Manitoba, calls the findings “very exciting.”
Biologists had called the lamprey-as-ancestor theory into question before, but the problem rested on the sparse fossil record of lampreys.
It’s probably not a possibility you’d considered until now, but for more than a hundred years, evolutionary biologists suspected that the lamprey, a jawless, eel-shaped, blood-sucking fish, was the closest living model of the very first vertebrates.
It’s not clear why lampreys would have left the rich coastal water in the first place.
Of particular interest is the fact that lampreys can regrow their spinal cord, a trait which could be life changing if humans came from the same root.
A human lamprey, sticking himself always at the thin and meager board of the poor, a vile parasite, but holy!
But the lamprey has no trace of arm or leg, not even a bone or cartilage hidden under the skin.
And its ancestors never had any limbs at all, for the earliest lamprey embryo shows no traces of them.
The lamprey is not a fish at all, only a wicked imitation of one which can deceive nobody.
Anything from a dead lamprey or a bunch of sunfish eggs to a piece of tomato can is grateful to him.