Tardigrade is plump, loveable

Who's a chubby little water bear? Yes you are. Ooh, yes you are.

This moment of straight-up cuteness is brought to you by Bob Goldstein, who researches tardigrades at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Tardigrades are, of course, microscopic animals that live in moss and the muddy sand on beaches. They can survive high temperatures, freezing, and crushing pressures by drying themselves up into a little hard ball, called a tun. Stick a tun in water and — no matter what horrible conditions it's dealt with — it will rehydrate and regenerate back into a tardigrade. Beyond that, though, we know shockingly little about these animals. Even their place on the evolutionary tree of life is up for debate. Among other work, Goldstein and his team are in the process of sequencing the tardigrade genome. It may well be the most adorable genome on Earth.

Dr. Goldstein's quick introduction to the tardigrade.

Thanks to Xeni for finding this in the BoingBoing Flickr pool!

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: adorable • cuteness • Science • tardigrades • water bears

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The Snowden Principle

http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

Sounds interesting, but both links are broken.
- http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  I’m showing them working. Are they still broken for you?
  - http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
    
    Server not found
    
    Firefox can’t find the server at tardigrades.bio.unc.edu.
    - Brainspore
      
      Works for me. Methinks you gots a firewall issue.
      
      [EDIT to add: come to think of it, that seems unlikely. Tardigrades should be able to pass through a wall of fire unscathed.]
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Works for me, too.
Brainspore

Anybody else want to go in on a Kickstarter product idea I just had?
- Brainspore
  
  Never mind, I should have known someone already beat me to it.
- chellberty
  
  I want a upsidedown Tardigrade couch.
- feetleet
  
  Not to be confused with the ‘water baby’.
Bersl

I am so very very glad that this is not showing this thing in motion.
- chenille
  
  In my opinion, they’re quite cute in motion, like stubby caterpillars. This one can’t be, though, because like all electron microscope subjects it is dead. Which rather limits its cuteness in my view.
  
  The links are not working for me. As far as the place on the evolutionary tree being up for debate, though, that seems exaggerated. Nearly everyone agrees they are closest to arthropods and onychophores, and if the precise arrangement might be unclear, that’s still more certainty than for many of the other animal phyla.
  - http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
    
    Dead? Dead?! How can it be dead? It’s nigh-invulnerable!
    - Brainspore
      
      Don’t worry, it’s only temporarily dead.
      - Felton / Moderator
        
        Miracle Max can clear that right up.
    - chenille
      
      That’s another thing that seems to be popularly confused. When tardigrades form a resting tun, they become very hard to destroy…but that doesn’t mean the active animals are.
      
      @fuzzyfuzzyfungus:disqus : That’s very interesting, but since it’s being reported as something new in a 2012 paper, I’m sure it doesn’t apply to most images.
    - $19428857
      
      Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for the fjords.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    I don’t know whether tardigrades are tough enough to take it; but some ticks have been observed moving about inside the electron microscope, and showing only 50% mortality two weeks after a half hour in a vacuum being bombarded with electron beams…
    
    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032676#
    - http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
      
      Yeah, well they deserve it anyway, little bloodsuckers… (says the man who lives in the woods)
    - B Goldstein
      
      Yep, they’ve been reported to survive electron microscopy… at least briefly…
      http://tinyurl.com/tardigradeSEM
  - Hanglyman
    
    Dead? I guess that explains why I’m not seeing it over at Cute Overload.
http://profile.yahoo.com/AF2ISEVCASVKZRF5EMVFTKFCAU Metro

Hardly is the key
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1255332312 Joel Risberg

Someday he’ll be a beautiful butterfly.

http://www.alicia-logic.com/capsimages/bl_036LiveBait.jpg
Repurposed

It looks like a nightmarish divan with hands.
wirrbeltier

These beasts can even withstand the cold vacuum of space, and apparently, interstellar radiation. At least in their dormant form. But still… Outer f*cking space! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrades#Physiology

Also, both links work for me. Weird… Maybe the sites are blacklisted somewhere or have been inadvertently DDOS’d by the boingers?
taj

I love learning about new things like this. And they always come with new words, too. (But this is what it leads to:

Brother: T*U*N? On a triple word score? Tun’s not even a word.

Me: Yes it is. It’s what you call a tardigrade in its cryptobiostatic state.

Brother: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
- chenille
  
  In fact, a tun is a large barrel for brewing, which gives us the word ton. The sealed-up tardigrades were thought to be a little like bit like casks, you see.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Tun’s also a unit of liquid measure and a cask.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

My plan for terraforming? Keep bombing the planet with tardigrades, they will find a way.
- feetleet
  
  And think of future rovers. Landing on a topsoil made of kitten hugs.
sean

Well thanks to your photo I presume a hand-made fabric facsimile will soon be available on Etsy.
http://www.zazzle.com/InfinitudeTortoises* An Infinitude of Tortoises

Happiness is a wet tardigrade.
http://twitter.com/babyforsale Jeff

Stories like this make me glad I impulse-bought a microscope.