The world is a strange place, and we’ve all seen our fair share of unusual stuff, but you’ll be surprised to see that there’s a lot you probably didn’t know about this planet! In fact, it’s not just all about our planet, but life itself. Living things have proven themselves to be highly resilient, and we’re certain that every corner of Earth is teeming with it. However, some places reek of death – places which we’d avoid at all costs no matter what the circumstances. Yet, even those places have living organisms in them which is an extremely astonishing fact. We have microbes that can survive extreme temperatures without any difficulty and can live on the most merciless terrain as if it were a meadow of fresh grass. These living creatures and where they live are sure to astonish you, so buckle up as we’re about to tell you all about them.
Extremely Hot Tar
Tar is what’s found on the surface of the lungs of smokers — yes, the black, sticky stuff. It’s also used in the making of roads. It is produced by burning coal or plants, but it also occurs naturally and is extremely toxic and dangerous for most living things. Now, imagine it so hot that it’s bubbling. That’s something that you’d never want to fall into because it’d spell instant death, but some microbes call that place home. Tar, also known as asphalt, occurs naturally in the Caribbean islands – the Trinidad island, to be specific — and there’s a huge lake there. Each gram of tar from that lake can potentially contain millions of these tiny organisms which leaves us to wonder if there’s a place that truly uninhabitable.
Radioactive Waste
Just when we thought we’d seen it all, a certain bacteria decided to show us a little more. Deinococcus, which has been officially given the title of the toughest bacterium in the world, can actually withstand the amount of radiation that would annihilate pretty much anything else on earth. A normal human would succumb to a relatively small dose of 10 grays of radiation. Keep that in mind when you take in the fact that this bacteria can easily take in 5,000 grays without so much as breaking a sweat. There are no effects on it whatsoever, and it has far more up its sleeve. It can live in the extreme exposure of 15,000 grays which is absolutely insane! This strange bacteria has really outdone itself in its ability to survive under extreme conditions.
Boiling Water
Water starts boiling at a hundred degrees, and that’s more than enough to burn normal humans badly enough to kill them. However, pair that with extreme pressure, and we wouldn’t be able to last for more than a couple of seconds. However, there are certain species that consider this to be just warm enough to survive happily. You’d think that hydrothermal vents which occur in the ocean naturally would be devoid of life, but the truth is that there’s a whole lot of living creatures there! Those vents have a lot of minerals in them, and creatures that live there flourish because of them. We generally see clams, shrimp, and tubeworms around these areas.
The Dead Sea
The last place on earth where you’d expect life to be would be the Dead Sea, because, well … it’s called the Dead Sea! It’s got so much salt in it that humans literally cannot drown in it because the water has become so dense. The water is literally heavier than people! Such salty environments aren’t optimal at all for life to thrive in. To give you some perspective, salt has often been used as a preservative in olden times when there weren’t any refrigerators around to keep food from rotting. The salt would make sure that small bacteria and other organisms would stay off of the meat so that it would stay nice and healthy for humans to eat later on. Now, in a giant body of water that saturated with salt, we’ve got the halophile microbes which absolutely love living there without any problems at all!
The world sure can be a strange place sometimes, but it’s good to know that life is all around us, even in places where we’re not expecting it to be habitable.
