First oxygen-free animals found!

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

grazie42

Contributor
Messages
9,106
Reaction score
5,559
Location
Sweden
# of dives
200 - 499
This is rather cool:
Scientists have found the first animals that can survive and reproduce entirely without oxygen, deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

He told BBC World Service they were about a millimetre in size and looked like jellyfish in a protective shell.

The basin, 200km (124m) off the western coast of Crete, is about 3.5km (2.2m) deep and is almost entirely depleted of oxygen, or anoxic.

Considering the implications of creatures which can exist without oxygen, she said that greater study of animal-microbe interactions in the extreme environment of Earth's oceans could help answer questions about the possibility of life existing on other planets with different atmospheres.
BBC News - First oxygen-free animals found
 
Well... the first thing I did was look at the date on the article.... :)

They apparently found these in a basin with little or no dissolved oxygen in the environment.

However, that's not to say there is no oxygen down there. Water, if I recall correctly, is 1/3 oxygen. If they found a way to separate that either chemically or electrically then they might have all the oxygen they needed.

Nevertheless, it would be very interesting to see if scientists can figure out more about their metabolism. The article says they got the eggs to hatch with no oxygen. That's pretty exciting.

If you don't mind I"m going to move this to a more appropriate forum.

R..
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Guys, this isn't The Pub. Lets save the political sidetracks for there.
 
I saw this article as well. It is very interesting, but inaccurate. There are several groups of animals that live and reproduce anaerobically, in the protozoa, the trichomonads and the parabasalids.
as well as a variety of more complex species in the nematodes, trematodes, cestodes, and even some annelids and arthropods. "Animal Life Without Oxygen". American Zoologist 1973 13(2):543-555
 
I wonder how this will impact the search for life outside our biosphere?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom