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."

Comments

Strange

[Pojut]

I find it odd that the article mentions absolutely NOTHING about the implications of this discovery as it pertains to life on other planets.

Re:Strange

[CorporateSuit]

Or how a bucket of these might taste! They live in brine, are from the sea... Imagine these on french fries and potato chips!

Re:Strange

[gstoddart]

I find it odd that the article mentions absolutely NOTHING about the implications of this discovery as it pertains to life on other planets.

Maybe because terrestrial biologists aren't always thinking in terms of extra-terrestrial biology? It's just not everyone's field of study.

Of course, the exo-biologists (and geeks here on Slashdot) will make the connection, but I'm hardly surprised TFA didn't. Me, I'm no longer surprised to hear that there are such organisms -- the longer we have known about "extremophiles" the more it makes it fairly obvious that critters adapt to all sorts of condition, and quite likely originated in them. For me, it makes it fairly obvious that in the big-honking galaxy (let alone universe) that at least *some* form of life ha evolved elsewhere.

Now, knowing this doesn't make it any easier to look for life on other planets. It broadens the search parameters, but I don't think it gives us a tool to say "there could be life there". But, who knows, astronomy has grown quite a lot in my lifetime.

Cheers

Re:Strange

[Adustust]

I agree that this article is very lacking on details. I would like to know more about how the hydrogenosomes affect the creature's mobility and whether or not a larger animal could be sustained with these organelles.

Re:Strange

[srmalloy]

There are other articles with more coverage -- Live Science, BMC Biology (PDF of 20-page article with pictures available), New Scientist, Nature, and others. The provisional PDF available at BMC Biology is the full article as it was accepted, and details the experimental procedure that confirmed that these were completely anaerobic organisms.

Re:Strange

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Or how a bucket of these might taste! They live in brine, are from the sea... Imagine these on french fries and potato chips!

Why were Futurama, Fry and anchovies the first things that immediately came to my mind when reading this?

Re:Strange

[theguyfromsaturn]

This probably does not answer your questions, but it covers a bit more details than the original post. Also, if you click on the title, you will link to the source article.

http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2010/04/anaerobic-metazoans.html

Re:Strange

[Jello B.]

Ha ha ha, the phrase "french fries" was at one point replaced with the phrase "freedom fries" and you referenced this in your comment. Your wit astounds me.

There is no Mediterranean Ocean

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Mediterranean Ocean. There is however a Mediterranean Sea.

Unsurprising

[thepike]

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.

The naivety of mankind

[assemblerex]

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.

Re:Been there...done that!

[ElectricTurtle]

You're ignoring the huge, huge chasm between unicellular and multicellular organisms, one which was not bridged by evolutionary processes for over 3 billion years by most estimates. It was previously thought that multicellular life without an oxygen-based metabolism was impossible, because previous models of microorganism evolution pegged multicellular development to a point after the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Siderian period. This discovery may lead to wholesale revision of models of microorganism evolution over geologic time.

Re:Been there...done that!

[Hognoxious]

The key part is multicellular. As in what your brain isn't.