In some locations, water can get drawn through cracks in the hot rock and become loaded with dissolved metals and other chemicals, before then being ejected back into the ocean. Specialised bacteria are able to exploit these hot fluids (up to 400C), to provide the energy foundation for a beautiful and bizarre collection of more complex organisms. The Hoff, for example, "farms" the bacteria on its hairy chest. Comb-like mouthparts scrape up the microbes into a meal.
One interesting question is how some of the creatures have spread so far around the globe. Vents are nutrient-rich oases in what is otherwise a resource-poor environment thousands of metres down from the sunlit surface of the ocean. And yet the likes of The Hoff and its five yeti-crab cousins have managed to reach widely separated volcanic ridges across the Southern Hemisphere.
Their last common ancestor probably lived 30-40 million years ago in the eastern Pacific. What we see today is the result of successful colonisations of vents by dispersed larvae. (Females release mini-Hoffs in big numbers to drift through the water column, some potentially making it to the next vent system).
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45400954
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