Meet the Endoterrestrials

Image by Zoë van Dijk

At the time, all living things were divided into only two categories called domains. Everything was either a Eukaryote (a plant, animal, fungus, slime mold, or single celled protocist) or a Prokaryote (a bacteria). And this little microbe was neither. They had to create a third domain called Archaea, which has filled over the last 40 years with fascinating creatures like Strain 121 which uses iron instead of oxygen to help render its food into energy. Technically, it reduces ferric iron to ferrous iron, and its waste product is the mineral magnetite. So, I ask you, if there’s an organism on this earth that breathes iron and shits magnets, what else is possible? 
~an excerpt from Sleep of Reason

THE REAL SCIENCE:
They live thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface. They eat hydrogen and exhale methane. And they may shape our world more profoundly than we can imagine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/meet-endoterrestrials/571939/

---