Organisms that can Survive Extreme Life Conditions in Dry, Cold, Vent, or Acidic Environments

Few animals, according to the original article, can endure the most severe living conditions. Frogs for example can live in extreme winter. But the top most animals that can endure intense cold, heat, and pressure are organisms such as microbes, bacteria, and archaea. These organisms which can be viewed and identified using a compound binocular microscope, can survive in harsh environmental conditions where any other life forms cannot survive. Certain kinds of organisms are known to survive the extreme life conditions in dry, cold, vent or acidic environments. A summary of the description of these organisms and their environment will be discussed below:

Dry life
Life, as stated in the original article, cannot exist without water. Yet, researchers have found microscopic microbes below the earth surface in which is considered the driest places in the world. These organisms, known as extremophiles, had evolved a biochemistry with functions that compensate for lack of water. Others can go into a dormant state for two decades and start photosynthesis within a day of exposure to liquid water. Some of them, according to the original text, even survived the vacuum and radiation during space shuttle explorations.

Cold Life
Some creatures live in the cold. But some cells have the talent to survive in the South Pole at temperatures as low as 100° F and below. Scientist also found out certain kind of cells that lives at temperature of 1.4° F.

Researchers uncovered microbes from an ice core thousands of feet below the Antarctic surface, and some extreme tolerant organisms were found in the Northern Alaska. These organisms are viewable using a compound binocular microscope.

Vent Life
In a most forbidding environment miles below the ocean surface, organisms learn to thrive in the earth’s crust where the water is heated to 600° F a temperature where photosynthesis is not possible. These organisms can be studied in detail using a compound binocular microscope or more high-powered microscopes like an electron microscope.

Yet under this conditions, certain single-celled archaea have develop a means to convert into food the inorganic hydrogen sulfide in the rock. This has enabled them to form microbial mats as foundations for community of strange fish, worms, mussels that can withstand pressure and darkness.

Acid Life
As described in the original text, life samples of organisms taken from extremely hot acidic water in Yellow Stone National Park were found thriving at a low level of 0.5 of acidity-alcalinity scale where 7 is neautral, below this level is acidic and above it is alkaline.1

In Soda Lake in Africa, several microbe species thrive at pH 10, because they are capable of evolving chemistry to maintain a neutral pH.

Studies show that these acidophiles and alkalophiles, viewable using a compound binocular microscope can remarkably adapt to varying range of life conditions.