• Question: Do you think there are creatures that we have never seen?

    Asked by parmar7r2 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Sara on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by eis7.
    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Almost certainly!!! The depths of the sea are pretty undiscovered as yet…there is bound to be a lot of stuff down there that no one has ever seen.. That is totally A-MAZING!! 🙂

    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Every year there are numerous articles identifying new species. I think there’s a difference between “identifying” and “seeing” though – these are usually small variations on birds, insects or reptiles where no one has noticed the differences before. Chance of any big and drastically different creature being found on earth? Possible, but as Amy says, it would have to be in one of the deep sea trenches, or maybe deep underground.

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi parmar! Definitely yes there are!! But also it depends on what you mean by creature!! Do microbes count? If so, you could go dig in your backyard – pick up a teaspoon of dirt – it will have about 10,000 different kinds of bacteria living in it! We haven’t even begun to characterize all of the microbes here on Earth. There could in fact be single-celled organisms out there right now that are so radically different from anything else we have ever known that we couldn’t even recognize it. For example what if their were single-celled life without DNA? How would we ever know? The best tool we have for identifying unknown microorganisms is sequencing their DNA. So how could we find them if they don’t have DNA!!!

      On the macroscopic side (that’s the stuff we can see), I am sure their are still tons of as yet unidentified species. The oceans are vast for one. We haven’t even begun to explore their depths! In the 1970s when we first went down to the bottom of the sea we discovered hydrothermal vents with entire ecosystems cut off from all light from the sun. Literally in the dark black depths of the oceans their are thriving ecosystems!! The rainforest is another place we have yet to characterize most species.

      I am personally holding out for something really weird. Like something not related to known life!! All life we have found so far is the same (has DNA and proteins!). Their could be this kind of “alien” life on Earth right now and we might not even know it! It would probably be microbial but that’s ok with me. Exciting stuff to think about what might be out there!!!!!

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