Tardigrandes, The Indestructable Water Bear

Do You Believe In a creature that lives in water, that are indestructable ?

3D Tardigrades Illustration

Tardigrandes are a very small creature, somehow called water bear or moss piglets. They were first described by the German pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773. The name Tardigrada (meaning "slow stepper") was given three years later by the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani. Since 1778, over 1,150 tardigrade species have been identified.Its sized less than around 0.1-0.5 milimetres. They are short and plump with four pairs of legs, each with four to eight claws also known as "disks". Most tardigrades are phytophagous (plant eaters) or bacteriophagous (bacteria eaters), but some are predatory




Tardigrades form the phylum Tardigrada, part of the superphylum Ecdysozoa. It is an ancient group Scientists has tracked the traces until the cambrian period.

A Sketch of tardigrade

It's (almost) couldn't be killed, Tardigrades can survive in extreme environments. For example, they can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.

A More Detailed 3D Tardigrades Illustration

Johann August Ephraim Goeze originally named the tardigrade kleiner Wasserbär (Bärtierchen today), meaning 'little water bear' in German. Although some species are parthenogenetic, both males and females are usually present, each with a single gonad located above the intestine. Two ducts run from the testis in males, opening through a single pore in front of the anus. In contrast, females have a single duct opening either just above the anus or directly into the rectum, which thus forms a cloaca. Tardigrades are oviparous, and fertilization is usually external.

Another Illustration

A number of morphological and molecular studies have sought to resolve the relationship of tardigrades to other lineages of ecdysozoan animals. Two plausible placements have been recovered: tardigrades most closely related to Arthropoda ± Onychophora (a common result of morphological studies) or tardigrades most closely related to nematodes (found in some molecular analyses).

Tardigrade genomes vary in size, from about 75 to 800 megabase pairs of DNA. The genome of a tardigrade species, Hypsibius dujardini, is being sequenced at the Broad Institute. Tardigrandes isn't completely studied, So not much we know about it



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