Slashdot Mirror
An Animal That Lives Without Oxygen
Julie188 writes "Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above."
I find it odd that the article mentions absolutely NOTHING about the implications of this discovery as it pertains to life on other planets.
Living With a Nerd
Sorry, couldn't help me self.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
CmdrTaco replaced oxygen with tacos years ago.
meep
so thats what is fixing the mars rovers?
Since these animals live underwater, this means they must also have found water without oxygen!
There is no Mediterranean Ocean. There is however a Mediterranean Sea.
Given that there are plenty of bacteria that can do this (including those that find oxygen toxic) it's not surprising that multicellular creatures have evolved to take advantage of low oxygen environments. There are probably numerous, people just haven't been looking hard enough. Plus, when you store your samples in places with air, you get serious sampling bias for things that like air.
Anaerobic respiration does precisely that and has been doing so for generations.
To think that all life needs oxygen or even a sun to exist goes back to our belief that the earth is the center of the universe.In reality we are a blip on the map.
There's a joke in this somewhere about somebody's mom breathing through her ears, but I'm just way too busy to figure it out now.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
A lot of the comments so far seem to be missing the point. Sure various bacteria and such don't need oxygen to live but until now, animals did. I assume they are using the term "animal" in the taxonomic sense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal).
The summary discusses an article which is talking about an abstract of the provisional paper available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1741-7007-8-30.pdf .
Even David Attenborough who himself narrated the Blue Planet were animals were shown that lived independent of the sun, narrated happily on Planet Earth that all lives needs the sun... It is just that for us it is so true that we forget that it isn't.
Fact: Hetero males have more anal sex then homosexual men. See how that fits in your little hetero world. Thinking the universe revolves around you is more common then you think.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I am certain that these organisms contain oxygen in some of their molecules, like DNA, RNA, amino acids, etc.
Perhaps these organisms do not consume oxygen in respiration?
There are vast deposits of salt beneath the Mediterranean, so much so that it's been suggested (Miracle Planet episode x(?)) that the salt deposits were necessary to the evolution of life forms today because of the amount of salt taken from the seas. Sorry I've not the time to search more but this The Mediterranean Disaster Mystery link gives an intro.
ideopath @ play
There is no such thing as "Mediterranean Ocean"
Water is 89% oxygen by weight.
872835240
no cthulhu tag?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
then -> than
percentiles -> percent
I'd guess that, roughly, more than 90% of the human population has a higher IQ than you do.
Suggestion: Make the changes in your "stock phrase" document, then next time you copy-and-paste them into the forum, you won't look like as much of a dunce. You'll still be a moron, just that, it won't seep out of your fingers as obviously.
Only I can judge you.
How do you kill that which has no life?!
Invent a creature and it could exist somewhere simply because we don't know otherwise.
Okay, how about this?
Nah--too weird...
Zombies also live without oxygen, when is someone going to release a research paper on that?
It probably survives on love, which is quite similar to oxygen, IIRC.
"The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin"
We don't have a Mediterranean Ocean here on Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea
Landlubbers. If they can't see the other bank, then it must be an ocean.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I seem to recall being told, in the late 70s, that a simple Lutetium-Vanadium compound made a very good Oxygen substitute, but it had to be in precise quantities. - neither too much, nor not enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1sgCT7X2c
Begs the question, is this an evolved form of some other oxygen-using Earth native? Or does it share absolutely NO ancestors with any other form on Earth? The latter is strong evidence for life as we don't know it elsewhere in the cosmos. A pretty strong hint, iow, that life is cheap and ubiquitous.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
When you spoke of those three Futurama features, I thought of Aqua Teen Hunger Force because it's a much more balanced meal than what you referenced.
I've seen them do that in Diablo. They put on armor that gives them increase in Hitpoints, then they hurt theirselves until they get such a low Hitpoints they can remove their armor to give theirselves negative Hitpoints. Then because their life is now away from zero, perhaps far under -1, they can go around pissing off everyone on this dirty little server in realm Planet-Earth and none can kill them.
It happened to Jesus the Christ once, so when they stuck that poor soul on a spear in the air He used spell Heal Other to take their life to zero for instant kill. Then to get even, they killed Jesus and stuck him in a tomb, but his three mormon babes came around to use Level 69 Reserect (if you know what I mean).
They just hadn't observed otherwise until now. Why do you have to assume everyone's that arrogant? Maybe you watch too many movies...
Perhaps this little guy does live on oxygen, but simply has a process to separate from the hydrogen directly from the water itself. Just because there is no saturated oxygen dissolved in the water doesn't mean it doesn't live on oxygen.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
These things this article's about sound a BIT like "Archaens" actually, but, you do raise a point:
E.G.-> If one were to "dig back deep enough" into earth's past, before what's been called "the oxygen revolution"?
Well ,you'd find something quite like these things too - in Cyanobacteria!.
I.E.-> Cyanobacteria made oxygen utilizing life possible really, by "busting loose" oxygen atoms from molecules that contained them in their chains!
(Because early on afaik in the earth's start of life beginnings? Whatever oxygen was around, was already "bound" to other atoms, not "loose" (sort of like how soil that has all the nitrogen locked into nitrates won't grow squat, @ least, as far as plants as we know them currently)).
Your point's a good one though - I've considered the possibility of gaseous, or energy based life-forms even... & this? THIS is the 'scary part', because once we begin our journeys into the "great wide open" that is the universe (ion-drive, anyone?)?? I think we had better be a "Wee Bit more judicious" in our treatment of other-world species & NOT do what was done to the native american or other cultures our explorers infested in the name of profit...
Also, I feel that (per what you state really) we ought to modify our view of what we call "intelligence" (and, get over our "racial ego" too, in our largely feeling that WE are the "only intelligent lifeform")
E.G.-> Simply because KOKO THE GORILLA long ago demonstrated SHE CAN "SPEAK" OUR LANGUAGE via signing, & she even taught her fellow gorillas how to use it to make requests (proving that they talk to one another, & that they can learn and spread that knowledge too (to the point she even named a pet kitten of hers "ALL BALL" (Which a ball was her fav toy, & she basically said "this is my fav. & best toy" now vs. that ball, more-or-less)... the other gorilla she taught sign even said to their keepers, via sign "I want a kitten too!" - pretty neat!)...
So, long & short of it: I just hope we can do that much, because IF we run into beings we cannot understand? We might anger them, & bring home an invader we CANNOT handle
APK
P.S.=> Oh, on a "side/off note"? I left you a little "FYI", here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1610696&cid=31784824 ... apk