Scientists recently found an amoeba in Lassen Volcanic National Park that apparently doesn’t know where complex life is supposed to stop.
Its name is Incendiamoeba cascadensis. It can reproduce at around 145 degrees Fahrenheit, remains active even a little hotter than that, and researchers found it could briefly survive temperatures around 158 degrees by changing into a protective form.
I don’t know about you, but at 158 degrees I’m pretty sure I’ve stopped being Dave and started becoming dinner.
What fascinates me isn’t that we found another weird amoeba. It’s that we thought we knew something.
There are temperatures where complex cells aren’t supposed to be able to keep doing all the complicated things cells have to do. And then somebody went poking around in hot water at Lassen and found this thing.
Living there.
Apparently unimpressed with our limit.
I love stuff like this. Every once in a while nature looks at something we’ve carefully put in the THAT CAN’T HAPPEN box and says:
You might want to get a bigger box.