littleshare: Loricifera, Animals to Live Without Oxygen

A group of deep-sea researchers from Italy and Denmark found multicellular animals that hold entire life without inhaling oxygen.

A group of researchers that found three species of Loricifera (similar animal jellyfish length measuring less than one millimeter) in the sediment basin L'Atalante, a region not oxygenated salt water at a depth of 3000 meters, Mediterranean seabed, or the middle of the ocean.

When Antonio Pusceddu, Researchers from Marche Polytechnic University, Italy, and his colleagues discovered Loricifera, they estimate that the animal had fallen into the sea after it died.

"We think it is unlikely that they could live there," said Pusceddu, as quoted from Discovermagazine. However, from the experiments performed on two subsequent expeditions, it is known that the animals found it was still alive.

Pusceddu said Loricifera has a unique way of adaptation to the oxygen-free environment.

These animals do not have mitochondria (cells that can convert oxygen into energy like in all other animal cells). But they use a structure that resembles hydrogenosom, the organ that uses microbes to produce energy.

Interestingly, these findings open up the possibility of a more complex animal life in harsh environments other oxygen free. Either on Earth or in other places.