Here's one completely new to me:
Today's VSL:Science link calls attention to tardigrades (aka "water bears," for reasons apparent in the YouTube video above), which are barely visible invertebrates that live on mosses and lichens -- and through virtually anything.
They are virtually indestructible. In recent years, scientists have subjected tardigrades (which are also known as water bears) to extreme temperatures, ranging from 155ºC to –200ºC. They’ve deprived the creatures of food and water for years at a time and zapped them with incredibly toxic levels of radiation. But, just like a Timex watch, water bears keep on ticking. Earlier this month, scientists reported that a colony of tardigrades had even managed to withstand the vacuum of outer space. (The European Space Agency put the creatures on a satellite and sent them into orbit for ten days.) If our life form manages to destroy the earth as we know it, maybe we can take some solace in knowing which other species will survive us.
Go, Bears, go!
Read more at VeryShortList.
Check out the "Tardigrades in Space" blog.
See lots of other tardigrade photos, which run from cute to a little scary.
http://www.veryshortlist.com/science/daily.cfm/review/619/Web_video/tardigrades-in-space/?vp
Tags: tardigrade, VeryShortList, water bears, biology, zoology, European Space Agency
- Log in to post comments
More like this
In September last year, a team of scientists launched a squad of tiny animals into space aboard a Russian satellite. Once in orbit, the creatures were shunted into ventilated containers that exposed them to the vacuum of space. In this final frontier, they had no air and they were subjected to…
It was a wet and rainy day yesterday, and we have a dissecting microscope, so I decided to see if I could find some tardigrades.
Tardigrade photo by nebarnix
Reposted from Nov. 2006
I went outside and scraped a bit of moss and some lichens off of our deck. Then I put the lichens and moss in a…
Water bears, aka tardigrades, are resilient little creatures. These microscopic animals can survive both freezing and boiling temperatures, radiation, high pressure, starvation, the vacuum of space and even desiccation. This last ability caught the attention of a team of researchers interested in…
Bdelloid rotifers are one of the strangest of all animals. Uniquely, these small, freshwater invertebrates reproduce entirely asexually and have avoided sex for some 80 million years. At any point of their life cycle, they can be completely dried out and live happily in a dormant state before being…