September 11, 2012 The humble tardigrade, also known as a
“waterbear” or “moss piglet,” is an aquatic eight-legged animal
that typically grows no longer than one millimeter in length.
Most tardigrades (there are more than 1,000 identified species)
have a fairly humdrum existence, living out their days on a
moist piece of moss or in the sediment at the bottom of a lake
and feeding on bacteria or plant life. Some tardigrades, though,
live on the wild side. Scientists have found the tiny creatures
surviving in boiling hot springs and buried under layers of ice
on Himalayan mountaintops. Experiments have shown that they can
survive being frozen at -328 degrees Fahrenheit or heated to
more than 300 degrees F, are capable of withstanding pressures
as powerful as 6000 times that of the atmosphere and can survive
radiation doses that are thousands of times stronger than what
would be fatal for a human. In 2007, a group of European
researchers pushed the resilience of this extraordinary animal
even further, exposing a