Pacific Lamprey

Pacific lamprey are ancient jawless fish that have swum Earth's waters for 450 million years - predating dinosaurs by 200 million years. Like salmon, they spend years in the ocean before returning to freshwater streams to spawn and die, transporting marine-derived nutrients inland. But their feeding strategy differs radically: lamprey are parasitic, latching onto larger fish with sucker mouths lined with teeth, rasping through scales to feed on blood and body fluids. They're the vampires of the sea.

The nutrient subsidy lamprey provide rivals salmon's contribution. A single adult lamprey brings 5-15 pounds of marine biomass upstream. Their carcasses decompose in streams, feeding the same food webs salmon support. Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest have harvested lamprey for thousands of years, recognizing them as a keystone species alongside salmon. Yet lamprey populations have crashed 90% in many rivers, often overlooked in conservation efforts focused on salmon.

For business strategists, lamprey illustrate how different extraction methods can serve identical ecosystem functions. Salmon are grazers - eating smaller fish and krill through pursuit predation. Lamprey are extractors - attaching to hosts and slowly drawing resources. Both accumulate ocean nutrients and transport them to resource-poor environments. The parallel to business models is direct: subscription services (lamprey-style recurring extraction from customers) versus transaction businesses (salmon-style discrete value exchanges) can both fund identical investments in infrastructure and growth. The mechanism differs but the resource flow function remains constant.