Electricity-eating microbes might sound like something straight out of a science fiction novel. In fact their behaviour is not quite as exotic as it might first appear.
Some microbes indeed have developed the ultimate stripped-down diet. They do not bother with food or oxygen. All they need to survive is pure electrical energy.
They often live in muddy seabeds or along the banks of rivers. Finding them is easy: biologists can coax them out of hiding by sticking an electrode into the sediment. The bacteria nearest to the electrode will even grow biological equivalents of electrical wires out of their bodies, so that other microbes further away can hook up to the electricity source. It is effectively a living power grid.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160613-there-are-microbes-that-eat-and-poo-nothing-but-electricity
Some microbes indeed have developed the ultimate stripped-down diet. They do not bother with food or oxygen. All they need to survive is pure electrical energy.
They often live in muddy seabeds or along the banks of rivers. Finding them is easy: biologists can coax them out of hiding by sticking an electrode into the sediment. The bacteria nearest to the electrode will even grow biological equivalents of electrical wires out of their bodies, so that other microbes further away can hook up to the electricity source. It is effectively a living power grid.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160613-there-are-microbes-that-eat-and-poo-nothing-but-electricity
