‘Super Natural’ celebrates the creatures that thrive in extreme conditions
In “Super Natural”, the award -winning scientific writer Alex Riley casts his curious and generous gaze on the extremists. No, not the extreme right or the extreme left; It is the distant, distant and distant life forms that inhabit the biomes of the land less advantageous. Wooden snails and frogs with turtles and painted late, these remarkable creatures display a talent to prosper – or at least continue – in a niche that is their own. Mr. Riley discussed Video with the contributor of monitor Erin Douglass on the wonders and possibilities of such lives on the limit. The interview was published and condensed.
You describe to find comfort in nature as a boy who grew up in the 1990s. Do you have an early memory that stands out?
I grew up in North Yorkshire, so northern England. It was very rural, very picturesque, but very alone. You had to find your own interests.
Why we wrote this
From the Tardigrades snail, the creatures that thrive in extreme climates inspire curiosity and fear. They also offer scientists the possibility of studying how species adapt to difficult conditions over time.
We had this pond at the bottom of the garden, and Frogspawn was there. It is very commonplace for adults – a frog goes from a tadpole to a frog to a frog – but for me to look who was exciting. Even today, it seems to me to be something incredible: there are transformations that take place around us, whether it be caterpillars for butterflies or frogs in frogs. I think the metamorphosis was really crucial for my education.
You organize the book by conditions – heat, cold, depth, height, etc. Why did you choose this framework?
I didn’t want to make it too complex. I wanted a profane to take this book, look at these chapters and say: “OK, I understand these environmental stresses and I want to know more about them.”
In the book sequence, I started with water – or lack Water – because water is thus associated with life. This is what NASA is used to looking for extraterrestrial life. Everything we know in terms of life on earth has an involvement in water and requires it in their cells. We have evolved from water.
What is behind the title?
There is a double meaning there. You are saying “great” for “very” – so all that is very natural. But there is also this supernatural element which is somehow inexplicable. We cannot even understand how mushrooms have survived Chernobyl on the reactor that exploded and really used the radiation for their subsistence. We cannot imagine what it is to live in total darkness and to have no association with Sunlight. This is something that we can’t really understand.
You call the Tardigrade “the poster for the resilience of life”. What makes these tiny beings so incredible?
They have been studied since the 1770s and we always try to discover how they are so hard. They are adorable: under the microscope, they look like small bears with a pig’s shape, eight chubby legs. Even their movement is adorable. They do not swim or do not walk – they go wild through grains of sand and foam, and in the seabed. And yet they are almost indestructible.
What creature has impressed you the most?
The microbes that live in the basement. There is water there, and there are radiation from the rocks, and this radiation divides water and it produces hydrogen. All these microbes need hydrogen and something to accept it; Chimiosynthesis is what they do, but it’s very, very basic. We did not know that life could exist below the surface, below the level of the ground. But these microbes were found five kilometers in the rocky substratum.
If we will find extraterrestrial life, for example, on the moons of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, they are worlds covered with ice, and they will be dark. Hydrogen is the most common element of the universe. If there is life elsewhere, then these small microbes in the basement seem to be a good example of what it could be.
You point out that endurance on ages is only possible with ingenuity – and be different. Would you say more about it?
Life must be different to survive, because to compete for resources, it is advantageous to go against the grain.
If you are a snail living at 8,000 meters in the Mariana trench, you have a fairly good life because you have pushed to this extreme in which no other fish can enter. You have no predations and you have all the anthropods you can eat. These quirks are actually a natural part of what life does on earth. This is an example of how we are all part of this adaptation.
For humans, our ingenuity was our intelligence, for all its costs and all its negatives. It will be ingenuity – in renewable energy sources and other forms of technology – which will allow us to live permanently on this planet.
Final thoughts?
There is this comfort that I get by thinking of deep times – not in the five -year political slots, but thinking beyond a human life. What will come next? Maybe life will be more symbiotic because we have been so extractive. It is a range of hope that I have. I think we can, we must live more permanently. But even if we do not do it, life will adapt, and it will just be another example of this creativity and this ingenuity.
