Paul Yancey/Whitman College/Schmidt Ocean Initiative
We're not sure if we should run away or catch 'em all.
That hunk of rotting dick skin right there is the deepest-dwelling fish ever discovered, a type of snailfish -- it hasn't been more specifically categorized because scientists can't look at it for too long without weeping. Going about its ugly way at 26,700 feet (or a decidedly less-impressive-sounding 1.7 leagues) under the sea, it looks right at home as garnish for Cthulhu's hellish salad. Its delicate body belies the fact that it lives underneath five oceans worth of crushing water, and its translucent, paper-thin skin reveals its liver and unmentionables, because this far under, no one can see your shame.
The further we delve, the freakier life gets. At depths of over six miles, researchers have found gigantic, horrible, albino (there's no need for pigment in their pitch-black world) "shrimp" that look like a buffet entree served only in H.R. Giger's nightmares. Incidentally, scientists think they can go about a year without eating, which is fortunate, because human faces are expensive these days.
Oceanlab / University of Aberdeen
In the meantime, it feeds on fear.
Scientists have even found an active ecosystem at the bottom of the ocean. The Mariana Trench, or Earth's ass-crack, penetrates almost seven miles into the crust, but landers scouring the bottom have found a veritable hotbed of bacteria and other tiny beings. So, yes, the sea floor is very much alive, because when things die, they sink to the bottom and create a rotting buffet not dissimilar to your local Golden Corral.
Equally hardy specimens have been found in other extremes: Scientists have recently extracted a 30,000-year-old virus from its ancient, Antarctic tomb. Even though it's been frozen solid for a majority of Betty White's acting career, it became instantly infectious the second it thawed. Oh, and it's **** gigantic: a throwback to the humongo-viruses of yore. Luckily, it only infects amoeba, but still, if "unfreezing giant, ancient viruses" is a thing we're doing now, we might need to find that habitable planet sooner than we thought.
