In “Super Natural,” award-winning science writer Alex Riley casts his inquisitive, generous gaze upon the extremists. No, not the far right or the far left; these are the far-deep, far-up, and far-flung life-forms that inhabit Earth’s less move-in-ready biomes. From snailfish and wood frogs to painted turtles and tardigrades, these remarkable creatures display a knack for thriving – or at least carrying on – in a niche of their own. Mr. Riley chatted via video with Monitor contributor Erin Douglass about the marvels and possibilities of such lives on the edge. The interview has been edited and condensed.
You describe finding solace in nature as a boy growing 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 lonely as well. You had to find your own interests.
Why We Wrote This
From snailfish to tardigrades, creatures that thrive in extreme climates inspire curiosity and awe. They also afford scientists the opportunity to study how species adapt to harsh conditions over time.
We had this pond at the bottom of the garden, and frogspawn was there. It’s very mundane for grown-ups – a frog turns from a tadpole to a froglet to a frog – but for me to watch that was enthralling. Even today that strikes me as something incredible: There are transformations going on around us, whether it’s caterpillars to moths or tadpoles into frogs. I think that metamorphosis was really crucial to my upbringing.
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 layperson to pick up this book, look at those chapters, and say: “OK, I understand these environmental stresses and I want to learn more about them.”
In the book’s sequence, I started with water – or lack of water – because water is so associated with life. That’s what NASA used to search for extraterrestrial life. Everything that we know in terms of life on Earth has involvement with water and requires it in their cells. We evolved from water.
What’s behind the title?
There’s a double meaning there. You Americans say “super” for “very” – so all of this stuff is very natural. But there’s also this supernatural element that’s sort of inexplicable. We can’t even comprehend how fungi survived in Chernobyl on the reactor that exploded, and actually used the radiation for their sustenance. We can’t imagine what it’s like to live in complete darkness and have no association with sunlight. It’s something we can’t really fathom.
You call the tardigrade “the poster child of life’s resilience.” What makes these tiny beings so amazing?
They’ve been studied since the 1770s and we’re still trying to uncover how they are so tough. They’re adorable: Under a microscope, they look like little bears with a pig-like snout, eight chubby legs. Even their movement is adorable. They don’t just swim or walk – they bumble through grains of sand and moss, and in the seabed. And yet, they’re almost indestructible.
Which creature impressed you the most?
The microbes that live in the subsurface. There’s water down there, and there’s radiation from the rocks, and that radiation splits the water and it produces hydrogen. All these microbes need is that hydrogen and something to accept it; chemosynthesis is what they’re doing, but it’s very, very basic. We didn’t know that life could exist below the surface, below soil level. But these microbes have been found five kilometers down into the bedrock.
If we’re going to find extraterrestrial life, say on the moons of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, these are worlds that are ice-covered, and they’re going to be dark. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. If there is going to be life elsewhere, then these little microbes in the subsurface seem to be a good example of what it could be like.
You emphasize that endurance over the ages is only possible with ingenuity – and being different. Would you say more about that?
Life has to be different in order to survive, because to compete for resources, it pays to go against the grain.
If you’re a snailfish living 8,000 meters down in the Mariana Trench, you’ve got a pretty good life because you’ve pushed into this extreme that no other fish can get into. You have no predation and you’ve got all the anthropods you can possibly eat. These oddities are actually a natural part of what life on Earth does. It’s an example of how we are all a part of this adaptation.
For humans, our ingenuity was our intelligence, for all of its costs and all of its negatives. It will be ingenuity – in renewable energy sources and other forms of technology – that will enable us to live sustainably on this planet.
Any final thoughts?
There’s this comfort that I get from thinking in deep time – not in political, five-year slots, but thinking beyond a human lifespan. What’s going to come next? Perhaps life will be more symbiotic because we have been so extractive. It’s a spectrum of hope that I have. I think we can, we have to, live more sustainably. But even if we don’t, life will adapt, and it will just be another example of this creativity and ingenuity.
