Tardigrades are water-dwelling, eight-legged, micro-animals that were first discovered by the German pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773. The name Tardigrada meaning "slow stepper" . They have been sighted from mountaintops to the deep sea, from tropical rain forests to the Antarctic.
Tardigrades are notable for being perhaps the most durable of known organisms; they are able to survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms.
Tardigrades have barrel-shaped bodies with four pairs of stubby legs. Most range from 0.3 to 0.5 mm (0.012 to 0.020 in) in length, although the largest species may reach 1.2 mm (0.047 in). The body consists of a head, three body segments with a pair of legs each, and a caudal segment with a fourth pair of legs. The legs are without joints while the feet have four to eight claws each. The cuticle contains chitinand protein and is moulted periodically.
Tardigrades are eutelic, meaning all adult tardigrades of the same species have the same number of cells. Some species have as many as 40,000 cells in each adult, while others have far fewer.
but what make this creature so interesting...here is some fact that may blow you mind
- Scientists classify these micro-animals as extremophiles because they are capable of surviving in extreme conditions. Even less than 10% of such conditions are considered hostile and deadly for any complicated life form we know
-Tardigrade babies are all born with a full range of adult cells. They grow not by cell division. Their cell simply expand in size...just grows bigger
- Tardigrades have been around for 530 million years. They have actually outlived the dinosaurs
-Tardigrades can survive extreme heat. Scientists have put them at scorching 151 °C and low as -200 °C
-Tardigrades can live for a decade with no food and water! They even found one in a 120-year old dried moss which reported a leg movement!
-Tardigrades surviving extreme pressure. can withstand 6,000 times atmospheric pressure.
-can survive radiation and space vacuum
-Tardigrades are capable of repairing their DNA pretty efficiently after the damage caused by radiations.
-so they are already impossible to kill, and have an unique DNA can actually dry themselves out, a process that breaks up their DNA into small pieces, much like the relatively stable form the genetic material takes during most of the cell’s growth and replication cycle. When moisture returns, they rehydrate by making their cells leaky, which admits water
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