THE TARDIGRADE

The World's Toughest Organism.

Tardigrade

what is a Tardigrade?

Tardigrades, are often called as "Water Bears" because of their stumpy appearance ,are water dwelling ,eight legged,segmented microanimals. They can be found just about everywhere : mountaintops the deep sea ,tropical rain forests & polar regions.They're noted for being able to withstand extreme conditions that would otherwise be fatal to nearly all other known life forms.

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Tardigrades have survived beings

• Frozen & deforested.

• Roasted & boiled.

• Zapped with gamma radiations.

• Blasted with solar winds.

• Placed in vacuum.

• Exposed to 6x the pressure of the deepest ocean trenches.

• Starved of food & water for over ten years.

WHY ARE TARDIGRADES

ARE HARD TO KILL?

Tardigrades harbour a flurry of unique characteristics that may account for their apparent indestructibility.

THEY CAN MIMIC DEATH

• Tardigrades can enter a kind of hibernation known as "Cryptobiosis".

• They are able to survive in this suspended hibernation for number of years.

• When reintroduced to a more temperate environment, they recover in matter of hours.

THEY CAN CHANGE FORM TO SURVIVE WITHOUT WATER

• Tardigrades can dehydrate almost completely during cryptobiosis.

• When this happens, they can replace water with a sugar called a Trehalose[C12H22O11].

• As a result, they can impervious to external environmental hazards.

THEY CAN HIDE FROM PREDATORS

• The tardigrade is one of the nature's smallest creatures.

• The largest adult's only reach a body length of 1.5mm. The smallest are below 0.1mm.

• Tardigrades can hide unnoticed by potential predators in sea sediment.

THEIR MOUTH CONTAINS SHARP DAGGERS

• Though they are minuscule, tardigrades are fierce and enough predatory.

• Their mouth contain dagger-like teeth used to spare algae & small animals.

• These teeth aren't actually teeth at all. They are called Placoids.

THEY HAVE BEEN TO SPACE & BACK

• Thousands of tardigrades were launched aboard the FOTONM3 spacecraft on low-Earth orbit in 2007.

• Most of them survived expose to vacuum, cosmic rays & high level UV radiation.

• Some of the females even laid eggs in space, & the newly hatched young one were healthy.

THEY CONTAIN FOREIGN DNA

• 17.5% of a tardigrade's DNA comes from other species.

• This is due to 'lateral gene transfer' of DNA from plants, fungi, bacteria & virus.

• Most organisms have less than 1% foreign DNA.

THEY ARE TRULY ANCIENT

• Tardigrade fossils have been dated to the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago.

• At that time, the first complex animals were evolving.

• This means the tardigrade has far outlived the dinosaur.

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