---
title: "Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) | AnimalTracks.wiki"
description: "A jawless survivor from a lineage that split from ours roughly 500 million years ago, armed with a sucker mouth ringed in rasping teeth."
image: "https://animaltracks.wiki/images/animals/sea-lamprey-1.webp"
published: "2026-09-07"
updated: "2026-09-27"
---
# Sea Lamprey (*Petromyzon marinus*)
> **Status**: Checked against 6 sources, listed under Sources below.
> **Tagline**: A jawless survivor from a lineage that split from ours roughly 500 million years ago, armed with a sucker mouth ringed in rasping teeth.
> **Soundtrack Vibe**: Sludge Metal & Heavy Drone // Boris, "Farewell"
> **Soundtrack Links**: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/1zcV54IyIHMrIDhTytt3b2)
> **Vibe Match**: A jawless sucker mouth ringed with rasping teeth and a file-like tongue, able to get through a shark's armor of dermal denticles, matching the slow, grinding weight of crushing drone and sludge metal.
## Biological Superpowers & Stats
- **Taxonomy**: *Petromyzon marinus*
- **Danger Level**: Low
- **Conservation Status**: Least Concern ([IUCN Red List](https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2024-2.rlts.t16781a221272455.en))
- **Superpower**: A jawless, sucker-like mouth ringed with small, sharp teeth that act as a rasp, plus a file-like tongue
- **Habitat**: North Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal waters, plus North America's Great Lakes, with spawning runs up freshwater rivers
- **Diet**: Blood and body fluids of host fish, from salmon and trout to basking sharks
- **Tags**: hematophagy, ancient-lineage, fish, living-fossil, ocean
## Natural History & Behavior
## An Ancient Jawless Branch
Sea lampreys are living members of an ancient vertebrate lineage that split from the branch leading to us roughly 500 million years ago. They have no jaws. Instead they carry a round, sucker-like mouth ringed with small, sharp teeth that work like a rasp, plus a file-like tongue. Sea-run adults can reach 120 centimetres (about four feet), while landlocked lampreys such as those in North America's Great Lakes reach 64 centimetres, and adults can weigh up to 2.5 kilograms. Sea lampreys are native to North America's Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Florida, and to Europe's Atlantic coast and the Mediterranean.
## A Mouth That Rasps
Lampreys attach to a host fish with that sucker mouth and suck its blood for days. Paired glands in their mouths secrete compounds that stop the host's blood from clotting. The sea lamprey does not seem to prefer any one host, and its recorded hosts range from salmon and lake trout to whitefish and walleye.
> **A shark's armor is no obstacle** In the Bay of Fundy, researchers observed ten sea lampreys feeding on basking sharks, the world's second-largest fish. The sea lamprey can get through a shark's armor of dermal denticles, its tooth-like scales, then rapidly excrete the large volumes of urea it swallows with shark blood.
## Blind for Years Before It Grows Eyes
A sea lamprey's life starts as a blind, worm-like larva called an ammocoete, which burrows into a stream bottom, usually silt or sand, and filter-feeds on algae and detritus. It may stay a larva for anywhere from three to seventeen years. As it matures it grows eyes and its sucker mouth, then spends twelve to twenty months feeding on host fish before swimming upstream to spawn. Spawning is its last act. Its digestive system disintegrates and it cannot feed, and both sexes die soon after the female lays 30,000 to 100,000 eggs and the male fertilizes them.
## The Invasion That Collapsed a Fishery
Niagara Falls once kept sea lampreys out of Lake Erie and the lakes beyond. The Welland Canal, opened in 1829, gave them a route around the falls, and they turned up in Lake Erie by 1921, Lake Michigan by 1936, Lake Huron by 1937 and Lake Superior by 1946. Their arrival caused a collapse in commercial fisheries in many parts of the Great Lakes in the 1940s and 1950s: Lake Huron's lake trout catch fell from 3.4 million pounds in 1937 to virtual failure in 1947. A binational control program began in the 1950s, using barriers, traps and a lampricide that kills larvae in their streams. By 2009, lamprey numbers were reported at less than 10% of their mid-20th-century peak, and a 2007 estimate put the yearly cost of control, monitoring and research at $14 million.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Do sea lampreys have bones?
No. Their whole skeleton is cartilage. They are even classed as vertebrates while lacking actual vertebrae. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
### How many gill openings does a sea lamprey have?
Fourteen in total: seven gill openings on each side of its head. *(Source: [USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database / NOAA Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System]())*
### How does a jawless fish manage to feed on another fish?
With no jaws to bite with, it grips the host with its sucker mouth, whose teeth and tongue rasp like a file. Lampreys secrete compounds from their buccal glands that keep the host's blood from coagulating, and they can go on sucking it for days. *(Source: [Chi et al. 2009]())*
### Why are sea lampreys such a big deal in the Great Lakes?
They are not native to most of those lakes, and their arrival caused a collapse in commercial fishing in many parts of the Great Lakes in the 1940s and 1950s. In Lake Michigan the total catch fell from 5.5 million pounds in 1946 to just 402 pounds in 1953. Control continues today, and the lampricide TFM has to be used again and again to keep their numbers down. *(Source: [USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database / NOAA Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System]())*
## Sources
1. [Petromyzon marinus (eel sucker). Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan.]()
2. [Petromyzon marinus Linnaeus, 1758. USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database / NOAA Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System.]()
3. [Ford (2024). Petromyzon marinus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2024: e.T16781A221272455.]()
4. [Smith et al. (2013). Sequencing of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome provides insights into vertebrate evolution. Nature Genetics.]()
5. [Chi et al. (2009). Suppression of neuronal excitability by the secretion of the lamprey (Lampetra japonica) provides a mechanism for its evolutionary stability. Pflügers Archiv - European Journal of Physiology.]()
6. [Wilkie et al. (2004). Lamprey parasitism of sharks and teleosts: high capacity urea excretion in an extant vertebrate relic. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology.]()
*Published September 7, 2026. Last updated September 27, 2026.*
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