
Tardigrades are so tough, they can survive outer space - wasi0013
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150313-the-toughest-animals-on-earth
======
dekhn
I found a tardigrade while using my microscope to look at pond water. Man,
they look funny and dopey and move around very clumsily. Not exactly what
you'd think would be the toughest animal around. I would have put my money on
rotifers.

~~~
Raphmedia
Your comment made me understand that I've never seen them moving.

I've found this video
[https://youtu.be/F5fg64rmFHE?t=15m19s](https://youtu.be/F5fg64rmFHE?t=15m19s)
that shows them.

My mind is so blown. They are so small but so animal like... !

~~~
Sharlin
Nitpick: Tardigrades _are_ animals.

~~~
Raphmedia
Sorry, meant mammals.

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huxley
Just the other day I read a fascinating (to me) Quora reply to the question
"What can happen if a human eats a water bear (the most resistant living
organism), or gets a water bear in their blood stream?"

Short answer: it gets dissolved in the stomach acid and dies.

Long answer here: [http://www.quora.com/What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-
water...](http://www.quora.com/What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-water-bear-
the-most-resistant-living-organism-or-gets-a-water-bear-in-their-blood-stream)

~~~
Red_Tarsius
Off topic question: What kind of nutrients does a _spoonful_ of tardigrades
provide? Would water bear farming be useful or just silly?

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jmadsen
"They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a microscope"

Confused - I can see things that are 1.5mm long. Some sort of editing mistake
here, I think.

~~~
masklinn
The average individual is usually 0.3 to 0.5mm, 1.5mm are giants. And though
they're described as barrel-shaped, they're not as wide as they're long.

The main problem is they're close to translucent, so bigger individuals can be
visible with good vision and the right light, but it's not exactly trivial.

------
bicx
Looks cool, but the page seems to freeze Chrome within a second or two. Chrome
could learn a thing or two from Tardigrades.

~~~
brixon
Put some water on it.

------
revscat
So this is interesting:

    
    
        It's not just the harsh environs of outer space that         
        tardigrades can survive in. The little critters seem adept 
        at living in some of the harshest regions of Earth. They
        have been discovered 5546m (18,196ft) up a mountain in the 
        Himalayas, in Japanese hot springs, at the bottom of the 
        ocean and in Antarctica. They can withstand huge amounts  
        of radiation, being heated to 150 °C, and being frozen
        almost to absolute zero.
    

I'm having a hard time seeing how the ability to survive in such high and low
temperatures arose via natural selection, especially the ability to survive at
near absolute zero while in the tun state. Such a condition obviously does not
exist on Earth, so this feature could not have arisen via environmental
pressures, at least not directly.

~~~
noir_lord
> Such a condition obviously does not exist on Earth, so this feature could
> not have arisen via environmental pressures, at least not directly.

Doesn't need to arise directly, it may be that the adaptations that allow you
to survive -50C are the same ones that allow you to survive -200C.

Also there is Exaptation where one trait for one set of circumstances later
adapts to serve another set of circumstances - the classic been feathers, they
evolved as a method of keeping warm and later where later co-opted for flight.

~~~
revscat
This seems the most likely explanation, but it is still extraordinary. Being
able to survive in cold is one thing. But being able to survive being placed
in liquid nitrogen for an extended period of time? That's incredible.

~~~
civilian
I dunno, have you looked into the human suspended animation with sulphur? A
layperson could say: "wow, it's amazing the humans adapted to go into
suspended animation when exposed to the cold and an atmosphere of sulphur!"
It's not really something we adapted to, it's just another accident of our
biology.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation](https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation)

All life is a hack! All organisms are just pushing the minimum code change to
get a leg up on everything else. Loopholes are everywhere.

------
bitwize
The tardigrade image in the banner at the top is... freaky. Like a Monsters
Inc. monster wearing one of those HAZMAT suits they have to wear in case of
child contamination.

~~~
scoggs
This is who I think of:

[https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2665/4048198665_d9b03610c4.jpg](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2665/4048198665_d9b03610c4.jpg)

Which is Heimlich, the caterpillar, voiced by Joe Ranft.

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dccoolgai
Cryptobiosis (the long-fangled scientific term for what these things do) is
something I've been fascinated by ever since I heard about Water Bears on one
of those weird little nature shows ten years ago. Most of the organisms that
can do it are understandably "simple", but it is truly fascinating.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis)

------
kpilars
I just read that "Tardigrades (water bears) are so tough, they can SURVIVE
outer space" and they need WATER from decade to decade to survive and they
also live on earth for 500 million years. Then I read "Suddenly, It Seems,
Water Is Everywhere in Solar System".

So wouldn't be fun to have a probe (on Philae for example) called
"Bearfinder"? Shouldn't our friends live (sleep) in worst case scenario (if
earth would be their birthplace) on the moon, mars, or comet 67P. Or best
scenario rather everywhere?

~~~
Red_Tarsius
This is actually a very interesting idea! We could also seed other planets
with our water bears.

~~~
juliangregorian
Could have potentially disastrous repercussions on alien ecosystems.

------
michaelfeathers
Someone could probably spin a great science fiction story around the idea that
tardigrades are an advance team for exploration by extraterrestrials.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Or distant relatives of the advanced nanotechnology brought here by aliens who
seeded life on this planet.

~~~
funkdobiest
I was thinking why we don't include these in the mars rovers and other space
probes, see how they do on other planets. Is there some ethical problem with
that? Like the prime directive.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As far as I know, such missions go to great lengths to ensure this does _not_
happen. There are two main reasons for that: 1) if you're searching for traces
of life on another world, you don't want to discover bacteria you brought from
Earth, and 2) you definitely don't want to unintentionally contaminate said
world with terrestial life that would start to alter the planet, because
you'll lose valuable research data.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection).

------
realrocker
Data. We can use them to store data. Not your average cat picture storage but
maybe DNA data of plant seeds and such.

~~~
moe
Well, but how? Tattoo them with a nano-needle?

~~~
realrocker
Or inject them with nano-fibre(?) Use them as a container.

------
BMorearty
I learned about tardigrades from an episode of last year's remake of Cosmos.
Neil deGrasse Tyson said tardigrades survived all five of earth's mass
extinctions.

~~~
JackFr
Not only did they survive, massive asteroid impacts could their means of
propagation.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425093/earth-ejecta-
cou...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425093/earth-ejecta-could-have-
seeded-life-on-europa/)

------
lkrubner
In the Bayesian sense, I must now update my priors regarding life coming to
Earth from another planet. I always gave that theory a very low probability,
but now that its been demonstrated that some life can survive in space, I must
admit the theory is somewhat more possible than I previously believed.

Also, does anyone know what "mm" stands for when they say these creatures are
a maximum of 1.5mm long? I thought "millimeter" but that doesn't make sense in
the context:

"They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a
microscope."

I can see things that are 1 millimeter with my own eyes, so what does "1.5 mm"
mean? Could "nm" would have been nanometer, but that would be far too small,
much smaller than a virus. I'm thinking they meant millionth of a meter?

~~~
fraserharris
Copied from below:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade)

"The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm (0.059 in), the smallest
below 0.1 mm. Newly hatched tardigrades may be smaller than 0.05 mm."

------
leeoniya
some may also like to read about single-cell wasps:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/3...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/30/how-
fairy-wasps-cope-with-being-smaller-than-amoebas/)

~~~
moonfern
Thanks for the link but the author, Ed Yong,
[http://edyong.flavors.me](http://edyong.flavors.me), is wrong. That wasp has
probably 10(0) 000's of tiny cells and is as big as some large single-cell
creatures.

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kazinator
Can someone explain why something up to 1.5mm long can "can only be seen with
a microscope?" That would make sense if the other dimensions were small. But
from the pictures, it appears that this is not the case; tardigrades are
approximately oval shaped, not much narrower than they are long. I have a
circuit board on my desk here where some surface-mount components are about
millimeter-something long, and less than a mm wide. I can plainly see them.

~~~
gnud
The Almighty Wiki says 'Usually, tardigrades are about 0.5 mm (0.020 in) long
when they are fully grown'.

Following the reference, we find that they're almost translucent, but can be
seen in the right light [1].

1:
[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/5/tardigrad...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/5/tardigrades/1)

------
jessaustin
Some scifi (e.g. Simmons's _Hyperion_ series) posits that the way for humans
to survive near-light-speed travel is for the body to be basically destroyed
by acceleration, and then rebuilt on arrival. If that ever happens, perhaps
tardigrades will inspire the techniques used in the process.

~~~
maxerickson
I enjoyed reading it, but Hyperion struck me as having a great many fantasy
elements. It has both time travel and FTL (both of which are nonsense given
current physics, there is no reasoned framework to explain them in). Also,
symbiotic life extension technology.

I also crankily believe that unobtanium is also a fantasy element (sorry
Larry, scrith too), so maybe I shouldn't bother having the conversation. But
why is a magic wand 'a stupid plot device', but an inexplicable technology is
'a reasoned exploration'?

Or is that not what hard sci fi means? Because fantasy often focuses on the
social implications of magic, which is at least a similar sort of activity as
imagining how big you can make something if you can adjust the laws of
physics.

~~~
apalmer
All valid but the caveat 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic'. The line between what is science fiction and
what is fantasy in a future setting can be very thin.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm basically arguing that any such line is arbitrary.

The distinction between science fiction and fantasy is probably a useful one
for helping readers find books they like. Going further than that seems like
it is going to almost always involve a lot of personal preference.

------
jessaustin
_If Rahm is to be believed, tardigrades can survive even higher temperatures._

If there is a question about this, one would have expected 90 years to be
enough time for someone to arrange a follow-up study.

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thebouv
Water Bears! My daughter is both amazed by and terrified by these.

~~~
neumann
Tell her that it is her spirit animal. A pretty cool list of features to have
for your spirit animal!

~~~
arethuza
Or a Dæmon from _His Dark Materials_ :

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Material...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Materials%29)

------
pvaldes
Rotifers support a billion dollar's human industries currently.

They are _the_ preys for breeding the tiny larvae of marine fishes in our
future spacial stations so don't go out your planet without some of them.

You don't want just to put some humans in mars. You'll need to move entire
reliable trophic chains, and humans are only the cherry at the top. So take
with you some rotifers, some Chlorella also and... well, maybe a big bag of
dehydrated eggs of desert pupfishes.

------
superasn
What is the chance that these creatures didn't evolve on earth but on some
other planet and comet and instead got transported here on a meteor. That
would explain a lot of things as to why they evolved to stand 6 times the
maximum pressure, temperature colder than ever recorded on earth, and their
other attributes which are too extreme for even the most hostile environment
on earth.

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brobdingnagian
Are tardigrades conscious?

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kang
I don't know if you know this but 'Tardigrades' are the only living beings
that survived all the four ice ages. This any many more amazing stories around
it can be seen in an amazing TV documentary series 'Cosmos: A space Odyssey'
presented by by Neil deGrasse Tyson

------
yawaramin
As I pointed out way back when,[1] Mark Shuttleworth really missed the
opportunity to name an Ubuntu release the Tenacious Tardigrade.

[1]
[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210)

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stared
There is an educational game, MetaBlast ([http://metnet-
mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/](http://metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/)), where
Tardigrades are creatures you can encounter (and interact with). Even one
appearing on the screenshot.

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daddykotex
I think they come up in one of Cosmos episodes. Actually very interesting to
see how they go around almost everywhere.

Edit :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA)

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funkdobiest
Does anybody else feel sorry for them, you look like a turd with legs, your
mouth looks like an anus, and you can't die easily. Maybe some sort of
reincarnation hell?

~~~
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
That description could apply equally well to a lot of humans who would choose
immortality if given the choice. Hell is us.

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OneOneOneOne
How do these critters handle bleach?

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zkhalique
Who would win in a longevity contest between a Tardigrade and a Rotifer?

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niix
I can't stop laughing at the first line of this article "If you go into outer
space without protection, you'll die.".

Its like the journalist really took to heart what she learned in her early
writing classes about using an attention grabber.

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amagumori
the previous title, "tardigrades, toughest 1mm-long animal on earth" didn't
get those page views rolling in...

