Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The extreme Water Bear

wiki: Tardigrades (commonly known as water bears) are microscopic, water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm, the smallest below 0.1 mm. Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, almost a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space. In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum of space. After they were returned to Earth, it was discovered that many of them survived and laid eggs that hatched normally, making these the only animals shown to be able to survive the vacuum of space.

2 comments:

annom said...

A "microorganism" zoo with lots HD beamers attached to various controllable microscopes viewing all kinds of microorganisms would be a fun addition to a normal zoo.

cybrbeast said...

That's a good idea :)