I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it may be that some animal species do not neeed oxygen.
Huh.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7570677/New-species-lives-without-oxygen.html
The first animals that do not depend on oxygen to breathe and reproduce have been discovered by scientists on the bed of the Mediterranean Sea.
Three species of creature, which are only a millimetre long and resemble jellyfish encased in shells, were found 2.2 miles (3.5km) underwater on the ocean floor, 124 miles (200km) off the coast of Crete, in an area with almost no oxygen.
The animals, named Loriciferans due to their protective layer, or lorica, were discovered by a team led by Roberto Danovaro from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy.
Science fiction authors take note.
5 Responses to “Animals without oxygen”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
There are numerous types of bacteria that don’t require oxygen to live (and to whom in fact it is poisonous), so I don’t know what the big fuss is about regarding multicelled animals that don’t need it.
Single-cell and multi-cell are kinda different. There’s a big step between the two.
If I wanted to keep a critter of this sort in a home aquarium, what special equipment would I need?
Water without oxygen in it. Not sure how you’d do that though. Maybe if you saturated it with CO2? Also not sure what the point would be, since it’s hard to observe a millimeter-long critter anyway.
Yeah, walking into a pet shop and asking if they have a aquarium de-aerator probably won’t work.
As far as size goes, remember South Park and the Sea Monkeys and make sure no semen gets into the tank, as the last thing the world needs is a intelligent civilization of non-oxygen breathing creatures.
(I had some Sea Monkeys and forgot to feed them for a few days; next time I checked, I had one really big Sea Monkey) 🙂