Remember when you were a kid, and people would ask you sophomoric questions to perpetuate your egotistical “I, Me, It’s-my-world-you’re-just-living-in-it” mindset, like, “What’s your favorite animal? And what’s your least favorite animal?”
Well, while I can still confidently say I love dogs best and loathe spiders most , the scientist in me has come around to greatly respecting at least one animal out there that has eight legs and goes by the nickname of the “Water Bear”.
No… No, I don’t mean this:
The “scientific” name for the organism is “Tardigrade”, but I don’t like that term. I mean, they named this thing based off the description for how it moves – slowly and ungracefully; but unlike most living things – this creature can withstand the wildest of elements and it is hard to kill: Throw it in lava, squoosh it with a ridiculous amount of pressure, shoot it with any kind of radiation, or…hell.. even launch it into outer space… and it will survive:
Like a boss.
So, I hardly think a Water Bear’s lack of ballet-like ambulatory abilities should be how we think of it. Some scientists even think that because of its capacity to withstand so much (and since it’s the only living thing able to survive outer space), the Tardigrade may have very well come from outer space using some kind of meteor as its spaceship.
One thing I wonder is, even though they seem to have little to no relationship with human beings – could they potentially – if some terrorist group decided to use them as an weapon of warfare by way of making them a resilient vessel to spread some kind of disease?
Onto a more positive thought, though, I also wonder how they could help us. I mean, these creatures not only avoid death, but they “technically” do die (go to zero metabolic function and tuck their legs up like a bug playing dead) if they dry up, only to reanimate after years and years! All they need is a little water and some kind of a sugar that they make, and voila! Immortal zombie water bears!
Another of many questions that come to mind, while glossing over what these animals can tolerate, has to do with what else we can learn from them. It’s not like radiation has absolutely zero effect on Tardigrades; but they have the capacity to repair their own DNA if it’s been damaged by radiation – something we can’t do- which means cancer for us.
Imagine if we could learn how they do all of these phenomenal things and then apply it to research comparatively in our own genome?
Cancer prevention, reviving our deceased loved ones, and living in outer space could be just around the corner!
But let’s be realistic… if those Water Bears help us figure out those first two things, they’d better have the last one sorted in advance; because with all those would-be dead folk still walking the Earth past their expiration date, our planetary overpopulation problem is going to mean we’ll need to migrate to the final frontier.
xoxo
<3~A