A closer look
Sunlight is apparently for amateurs. When scientists took the Alvin submarine down to the Galapagos Rift in 1977, they fully expected a barren underwater desert. Instead, they found a chaotic metropolis of massive tube worms flourishing near scalding hydrothermal vents. These Riftia worms don't even have a mouth or a digestive tract. Instead, their blood-red plumes absorb highly toxic volcanic chemicals from the water and transport them to a specialized organ called a trophosome. There, millions of enslaved chemosynthetic bacteria eat the poison and excrete pure sugar to feed their worm hosts.
