What if you are put through a test of extreme survival stunts? Boiling heat, Freezing cold, you name it and we list....! Well, its beyond our level of imagination, isn't it?
Meet the tardigrades (also known as 'water bears' or 'moss piglets'), a kind of water dwelling, microscopic invertebrates.
They are really very tiny, about the size of a grain of sand, hardly visible to the naked eye that can survive in the most extreme conditions. Here's a comprehensive look about the so called 'toughest creature' in the world which could even outlive human beings.
Tardigrades (meaning 'slow movers') were discovered by German zoologist Johan Goeze in 1773. With four pairs of legs called 'disks', a full grown individual may range to about 0.5 millimetres in length.
One of the most resilient known animals, they are found almost everywhere, from the deepest ocean trench to the hottest desert on earth's surface; surviving all the odd situations on that comes its way. These creatures have been classified as extremophiles for their ability to survive in extreme environments. For human beings, even less than 10% of such conditions are considered deadly. A completely dehydrated tardigrade can be brought back to life just by adding water—even decades later.
Researches have revealed that their genome contains the most foreign DNA from all over the animal kingdom ever known. Interesting is the fact that they inherit 1/6th of genes from foreign organisms, rather than inheriting the whole genetic make up from their ancestors.
Most of these foreign genes are bacterial in origin and they help this creature in tolerating extreme situations. In certain cases, the tardigrades' own genes have been replaced by foreign ones, or own genes have been incorporated with foreign genes elsewhere.
“We speculate that this happened at once, but probably this was ongoing and may still be happening today. If they can get hold of DNA from organisms already living in extreme environments, they may be able to pick up some of the same characters,” says Thomas Boothby, a Post Doctoral Fellow of Life Sciences Research Foundation at the University of North Carolina. But it is still unknown how these creature managed to accumulate together so much foreign genetic materials.
William Miller, a leading tardigrade researcher at the Baker University says, "I've collected living tardigrades from a part of the Sinai desert that didnt receive any rain since the last quarter of a decade". Although these are basically aquatic creatures, and need a minimum amount of water to do anything, but that stands as a surprise as to how they managed to survive.
It is no surprise as to why these organisms are considered the toughest. While we await more inputs on these living beings, its a wrap on this special piece.
Good day, folks!