Current Events 3

Animals without oxygen, underwater
Stephen Ornes
Monday, April 26th, 2010

Animals without oxygen, underwater
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20100428/a1963_1823.jpg

This article is about the animals that live deep, deep underwater in the Mediterrian sea, called Loriciferan. These small, tiny, grain sized species, live two miles below the surface of the Mediterrian sea. The amazing thing about them is that they do not need oxygen to live, which is incredible, because, all organisms, besides the simplest one, needs oxygen to survive. But, the scientists were shocked, because these ones don’t. They live in L’Atalante Basin which has no oxygen in it- it is super salty, so salty that it cannot mix with the seawater above it. Seawater has oxygen in it, making fishes and underwater animals stay alive. When they were found, scientists thought they were cadavers at first. But, when they researched more about them, they figured out that they were animals and that they were alive! They did experiments, putting the samples from the bottom of the lake in containers including nitrogen which is getting oxygen away. They observed them, and saw that some animals had eggs, which led scientists to know that they were reproducing. They have also found some traces about their metabolism, old skin for example. The scientists tested everything, except HOW animals live without oxygen. This means that scientists need to study more, to find out what actually do we know about animal’s life.
I found this article interesting because it describes a new finding about living things, and it shows that science has no border. This is for sure connected with the topic that we are studying- ecosystems, and adaptations to its conditions. And I’m sure that scientists will figure out how these animals are adapted to living conditions without oxygen- what has happened in their cells? But I’m actually asking myself: How many things are there to find out, and is everything as it is?