I would have rejected this as impossible until the day I read it in Science News. It reminds me of a ghastly blurb for one of Hal Clement's books asserting that "in science, nothing is impossible!" I still feel sure that plenty of things are impossible ... but not necessarily the things we thought were impossible.
In case you have trouble with the link, a quick summary is as follows: a fungus has been found that actually harvests energy from gamma rays, using the well-known pigment melanin. Do not try this at home.
