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."

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.

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.

Re:Strange

[Chris Burke]

We already knew of anaerobic monocellular life, so hypothetically life could arise on a planet without oxygen. The only thing this changes is that it means we could hypothetically also find multicellular life on such a planet. I don't think existing theory said such life was impossible, meaning it was already a hypothetical possibility, so now it's no longer hypothetical on earth, and somewhat less hypothetical for alien worlds.

Which is still pretty cool. I myself previously assumed that we'd find multicellular life only on planets with oxygen from either geologic sources or as a result of microorganisms producing it. Still I'm hardly surprised that a short article on oceanic biology doesn't cover every tangentially related field of science that I'm interested in. :)

Re:Strange

[Enderandrew]

Aerobic life was fairly early in the phylogenic tree. It isn't uncommon to find anerobic life even today, it is uncommon to find multicellular anaerobic life.

Fantastic!

[grikdog]

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.