Tardigrade

Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Realm / Terrestrial / Life / Microorganism / Tardigrade (Water Bear)
—————————

tardigrade : any of a phylum (Tardigrada) of microscopic invertebrates with four pairs of stout legs that live usually in water or damp moss — called also water bear — Merriam-Webster See also OneLook

Encyclopedia

Tardigrades, also known colloquially as water bears, or moss piglets), are water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals. They have been found everywhere: from mountain tops to the deep sea and mud volcanoes; from tropical rain forests to the Antarctic. Tardigrades are one of the most resilient known animals, with individual species able to survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms, such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation. About 1,150 known species form the phylum Tardigrada, a part of the superphylum Ecdysozoa. The group includes fossils dating from 530 million years ago, in the Cambrian period. — Wikipedia

Tardigrade (Encyclopædia Britannica)
Tardigrade (Biology Online)

Water Bears, Tardigrada (One Zoom)
Tardigrada (Catalogue of Life)
Tardigrade (WolframAlpha)

———————–

Adventures

Explore related posts on Cosma …

Arbornautics - Traditional news stories usually cover a single subject or the straightforward relationship between two subjects. However, every once in awhile, a story comes along that crams a deceptive number of subjects and interesting relationships into a tiny space. Exploring stories like that can be an adventure. Here’s a link to a wonderful, five minute video … Continue reading Arbornautics
Octopuses from Space! - Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space? It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in … Continue reading Octopuses from Space!

———————–

Inspiration

Articles about Tardigrades (Big Think)
Talks about Tardigrades (TED: Ideas Worth Spreading)

———————-

Innovation

Science

Microbiology is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being unicellular (single cell), multicellular (cell colony), or acellular (lacking cells). Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, protistology, mycology, immunology, and parasitology. Eukaryotic microorganisms possess membrane-bound organelles and include fungi and protists, whereas prokaryotic organisms—all of which are microorganisms—are conventionally classified as lacking membrane-bound organelles and include Bacteria and Archaea. Microbiologists traditionally relied on culture, staining, and microscopy. However, less than 1% of the microorganisms present in common environments can be cultured in isolation using current means. Microbiologists often rely on molecular biology tools such as DNA sequence based identification, for example the 16S rRNA gene sequence used for bacteria identification. — Wikipedia

Tardigrades (Goldstein Lab, UNC Chapel Hill)

————————–

Preservation

Library

Subject: Tardigrade (Library of Congress)

Subject: Tardigrade (WorldCat)

—————————

Participation

Education

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Course

Microbiology (MIT OpenCourseWare)
Microbiology (edX)

Community

More News …

Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine.

A trick from tardigrades could help human blood...
on October 8, 2026 at 6:40 pm
Tardigrades survive conditions that would destroy most other living things: freezing, dehydration and the vacuum of space. Researchers even put tiny tattoos on them, and the animals don't seem to mind. By learning how these critters carry on, researchers hope to find ways to protect human cells.
An entire world of fungi nearly a third of a mile...
on July 29, 2026 at 5:00 pm
Hundreds of feet below Earth's surface, rocks and water teem with fungi and support complex ecosystems of tiny organisms, according to a University of Michigan study that finds fungi are far more abundant deep underground than researchers previously thought.
When glaciers vanish, so does the hidden life...
on June 16, 2026 at 3:20 pm
We often hear about glacier melting and predictions of what climate change could do. But very little is mentioned about the effects on ecosystems or the animals that call them home. To redress some of this imbalance, an international team of researchers set out to map this hidden biodiversity. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tardigrades reveal extreme heat-blocking survival...
on May 29, 2026 at 2:40 pm
Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are tiny eight-legged animals that can survive in extreme environments, where humans and most other animals would die. This resistance to extreme conditions, including intense heat, very high or low temperatures, radiation and low oxygen levels is called "extremotolerance."
Death-defying protein found in tardigrades...
on May 6, 2026 at 8:00 pm
A protein found only in microscopic tardigrades, one that allows them to survive extreme conditions like dehydration, can convey similar durability in synthetic cells, according to new research from University of Michigan Engineering and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.