Scientists seem to take a semi-sadistic pleasure in subjecting one of the cutest animals on Earth – the humble water bear – to some of the most extreme conditions imaginable. Water bears have been put through drought, cold, heat, pressure, radiation, even the vacuum of space, all in the name of science. That’s because the little animals, more formally called tardigrades ("slow steppers"), are some of the toughest animals on the planet, in spite of their petite size -- around half a millimeter -- and cuddle-me looks.
Most of these extreme survival abilities likely link to their need to survive drying-out on the mosses on which they typically live (alternate water bear name: moss piglet). The mosses themselves possess a similar ability – called poikilohydry – uncommon among plants as well, but key to the environments in which both creatures live. The genetic machinery water bears need to repair themselves after dessication seems to work equally well after freezing, extreme heat, irradiation, or extravehicular activity.
Though many people had tested their ability to wake up and walk away after drying or freezing, few had tested whether they could actually go on to make little water bears after spending decades in the deep freeze.
Now, scientists from Japan have answered that burning question for us by thawing water bears collected in a moss sample in Antarctica and frozen during the Reagan administration – on November 6, 1983, to be precise, a time of Atari, Thriller, and skateboards. 31 years later, on May 7, 2014, they woke up to smartphones, Beyonce, and “hoverboards”, in their own tiny version of “Back to the Future” or “Futurama”. Perhaps luckily for them, the water bears remained blissfully unaware of any human cultural changes that took place during their long snooze, and went about doing what water bears do best: walking around on their eight bear claws, eating algae, and looking cute.
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