Abstrakt
This contribution provides summary information on the historical and contemporary significance of lampreys for human life. The unusual to bizarre appearance of lampreys, especially their sucking oral disc equipped with teeth and eel-like scaleless body, initially posed a problem for zoologists to correctly classify lampreys in the zoological system.
In certain places, lampreys are used as bait in sport fishing, and a total of seven species are fished extensively for gastronomic purposes in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia. Information about their consumption dates back as far as the ancient Rome during the first and second centuries AD.
The quality of their meat is excellent, however, the slime and serum are poisonous, so there are known historical data about probable poisoning after their consumption. At present, lampreys are routinely available fresh, fried, smoked, marinated, canned or in vinegar, sold by supermarkets as highly prized delicacy. Lampreys play an important role in the culture and folklore of some nations.
For example, lampreys are ecologically and culturally important for the North American Indian tribes of Yurok and Karuk. These indigenous peoples have been fishing for lampreys for centuries, as part of their fishery wealth.
The Pacific lamprey is also of spiritual significance for these tribes. The enormous esteem people have for lampreys is also reflected in the various coats of arms, in which the lamprey appears (e.g., in several cities in Belgium, Finland, France, Latvia, Portugal, Spain).
Cooking skills and traditions are practiced at various public festivals where lampreys are caught and immediately consumed after cooking (e.g., Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain). Lampreys have become an important model group in evolutionary studies of vertebrate development, and due to their remarkable properties, they are also used in biomedical research on anti-coagulants, biliary atresia, hemochromatosis, or spinal cord regeneration.
Lampreys are sensitive to environmental changes, so they can also be used as bioindicators of the quality of flowing waters. Based on the analysis of the lamprey's specific method of swimming, biologists and engineers created a biomimetic robot with an electronic nervous system that imitated the movement and orientation of lampreys in the water.
Nevertheless, there is also an example of the harmful effect of lampreys, namely the parasitic sea lamprey, which causes significant damage to economically important fish in the Great Lakes, requiring a yearly implementation of financially expensive measures to eliminate the lamprey.