Liked on YouTube: First Non Breathing Animal Discovered By Scientists!

First Non Breathing Animal Discovered By Scientists!
Subscribe for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/InsaneCuriosity?sub_confirmation=1? From what it is, to what it means to life as a whole with its discovery, join me as I show you the World's First Ever Animal That Doesn't Breathe Found! I want you right now to picture an animal. Any animal on the planet that you know is real. It can be a bird in the sky, a fish in the ocean, a person that you know, a pet that you love, whatever you want. Researchers have discovered a unique organism that doesn't need to breathe. Instead, the tiny parasite lives in salmon tissue and evolved so that it doesn't need oxygen to produce energy. This creature has been officially named Henneguya salminicola, and it is a mere 10 cells in its entirety. Stephen Atkinson, senior research associate at Oregon State University's Department of Microbiology had a lot to say on the matter in terms of what it is and what it can do. "When we think of 'animals,' we picture multicellular creatures that need oxygen to survive, unlike many single-celled organisms including protists and bacteria," he told CNN. "In our work, we have shown that there is at least one multicellular animal that does not have the genetic toolkit to use oxygen." The H. salminicola is a myxozoan cnidarian, a type of animal related to jellyfish and coral. It lives inside salmon and "steals ready-made nutrients" from it, Atkinson said, instead of consuming oxygen directly. Now, on the surface, this sounds pretty basic. Especially being that it IS a parasite, and parasites feed off of their hosts to survive. All fairly standard. But the problem is that even the most basic of parasites still need oxygen to feed, so the fact that Henneguya salminicola is astonishing. Especially when you consider that it used evolution and its environment to help do that, and it is the ONLY creature to seemingly be able to do that. What's more, it's important to note that when we say it used its "environment" to evolve to not need tissue, we're NOT talking about the ocean or seas or other water-filled places that the salmon it infects lives in. Rather, we're talking about the salmon itself. Confused? We'll explain. You see, parasites live within their hosts in key areas where they can get what they need to survive, right? Well, in the case of Henneguya salminicola, they live within the very muscle of the Salmon itself. And they do it in such a way that they don't harm the Salmon at all. In fact, it's believed by some that the Salmon (like other hosts) don't even notice them. Oh, and if you're curious, no, it doesn't seem like this parasite can infect humans. So we dodged a bullet on that one. Getting back to its environment, this part of the Salmon has very low oxygen content, so low that most creatures couldn't survive here, except for Henneguya salminicola. And the reason is simple, it stopped itself from having Mitochondria in its body. In most living creatures, Mitochondria are what turn food into energy. They are what give us our strength in many ways, and yet, Henneguya salminicola doesn't have it. It doesn't need it, and it "breathes" just fine without it. In fact, many who have studied the parasite have praised its unique ability to live on when it shouldn't, and even be more efficient without it. "By losing the genome, the parasite is saving energy by not having to copy genes for things it no longer needs," Atkinson said. Then along came Cyanobacteria, a microscopic creature who learned a technique that almost wiped out all life on Earth. That "technique"...was photosynthesis. So when Cyanobacteria came along and started pumping oxygen into the atmosphere via photosynthesis, the bacteria and other microorganisms started to die out. Yes, the Earth almost had all life wiped out BECAUSE of oxygen. This actually included Cyanobacteria, because the Oxygen they were pumping out started to change in the atmosphere, which affected their process. But because Henneguya salminicola has been discovered, and has been proven to not breathe Oxygen in order to survive, that means that theoretically, there could be legions of other creatures that we don't know about that have this feature, or even something more dramatic and pronounced. And before you say, "there can't be that many new creatures out there in the world that haven't been discovered!" perish that thought. Because every single YEAR we find more and more new creatures that haven't been discovered previously. Heck, we're still finding creatures that we thought have been extinct for millions of years and yet clearly aren't. Like the Coelacanth or the Frilled Shark. What's more, don't forget that while humanity has spanned the globe, we don't know what's in EVERY inch of the globe. Think of places like the Amazon Rainforest, Madagascar, Antarctica, the Australian Outback, and more. #InsaneCuriosity#RecentSpaceDiscoveries #NonBreathingAnimals
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