This is potentially my new favorite animal. At least it has made my top 5. The name of this incredibly ugly yet somehow cute animal is Tardigrade or also called "water bear". These creatures are incredibly small as they are about 500 micrometers big which if I did my math right is about 500000 nanometers big. This is pretty big when it comes to the nano world, but it is incredibly small to us humans. These water bears can be photographed by using a scanning electron microscope. This image was taken looking at a mossy substance and they saw this little water bear roaming around the terrain. The coolest thing I've learned about this animal is their resiliency. according to sciencenews.org these guys can survive extreme radiation, the cold down to -272 °C, the heat up to 150°C, and can survive without food and water for years. The coolest story I found was on national geographic and they said that there was a dried out piece of moss that sat in a museum for a 100 years and when they added water to moisten the moss up the dried up water bears came out of their hibernation and were alive and thriving. My final cool fact is that water bears can survive the vacuum of space and they can live out there without anything! These are easily the coolest animals I've ever heard of!
Citations
“Tardigrade.” Animals, kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/tardigrade. Accessed 8 May 2023.
- Temming, Maria. “Water Bears Will Survive the End of the World as We Know It.” Science News, 8 Aug. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/water-bears-will-survive-end-world-we-know-it.
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