New Discovery: Blood-Red Worms That Thrive in a Toxic Cave (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)
June 3, 2016 - It's wet, muddy, slimy, and smells like rotten eggs: Sulfur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, is full of gases so toxic that a person who enters would pass out after just a few breaths. But that didn't stop David Steinmann of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Donning a special respirator, he first explored the cave in 2007. In this extreme environment, devoid of sunlight, Steinmann found clumps of tiny blood-red worms, each one just an inch long and as thin as a pencil lead. Now genetic analysis has confirmed that the worms are a new species that may not be found anywhere else on Earth. These tiny worms could even offer clues to the kinds of life that might be found on other planets.
Read more about the wormy wonders that live in Sulfur Cave on National Geographic's Phenomena.
VO Frank Krell: These worms are small. They are red, blood red and they occur in well, knots of worms. Lots of worms together.
VO Dave Steinmann: Finding the worms in a place like Sulfur Cave shows that there are even places on Earth where creatures can live where they are not connected to or dependent upon sunlight at all.
VO Dave Steinmann: Sulphur Cave is full of toxic gases. If you’re going into Sulphur Cave you can’t go in there without a self-contained breathing apparatus.
VO Dave Steinmann: It’s just like a stinky, muddy hole in the ground. And deadly to humans and most other creatures. And it’s full of life.
VO Dave Steinmann: My initial reaction when I first saw the worms was, ‘Wow, there’s really something living in this cave!’ It immediately made me think they could be a new species that probably lived nowhere else on the planet.
VO Dave Steinmann: To keep these worms alive between the cave and the museum my homemade method of oxygenating these worms is to aerate them through this little straw.
Dave Steinmann on camera: I’ve just got to make sure I don’t drink any by accident. The last thing I’d want to do is to suck up a bunch of worms.
Frank Krell on camera: If you go into a toxic cave you don’t expect anything exciting living there, because it’s supposed to be dead. And suddenly you find worms that even look nice. Well, as much as worms can look nice.
VO Dave Steinmann: Some of the items we’re researching still with the worms include how and why their blood binds oxygen so well. There could be some potential medical benefits to that.
VO Dave Steinmann: Some other things we’re researching with the worms include an unknown substance that reduces the hydrogen sulfide. And this could potentially help with reducing hydrogen sulfide in our environment.
VO Frank Krell: We always think, ‘Well to have life on another planet it has to be like Earth.’ This cave is certainly not like Earth.
VO Dave Steinmann: The worms in Sulphur Cave survive without sunlight because they’re living on bacteria that get all their energy from the hot spring water that feeds the cave.
VO Dave Steinmann: So this could be similar to what might go on on another planet such as Mars. Because on other planets there could be underground caves that could easily harbor life similar to the Sulphur Cave worms.
Frank Krell nat sound: It’s nice, it’s just a humongous amount of worms!
VO Frank Krell: Dave, he finds all sorts of exciting things. He just goes into places where normal people don’t go. And finds very exciting little worms.
