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Tardigrades

Swifty

doesn't negotiate with terriers
Joined
Sep 15, 2013
Messages
33,608
The Tardigrade's genome has recently been sequenced, its DNA is as weird as it is ..

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tar...and-it-has-the-most-foreign-dna-of-any-animal
tardigrade2.jpg
 
Perhaps they really are space invaders.
 
It's nose is the least organic/natural nose I've ever seen on a living creature. That nose looks more like a mechanical cog. I spotted that smile and chubby cheeks to JamesWhitehead :)
 
They are truly amazing creatures, can deal with a temperature range of 750 degrees Fahrenheit, and nothing fazes them. I might go and look for one in a pond, they would make good low-maintenance pets. If I find one I'll call him Tommy, or Teresa if it is a girl (can you tell?).
 
To me it looks as if it's wearing a sort of rubberised canvas diving suit, complete with seams.

As for its nose, that resembles the Dalek 'eye'.

So I reckon it's a miniaturised Dalek in a diving suit - no wonder its genome is so strange!
 
I'm worried now that some still think the model in the still picture above is a real Tardigrade!

True, the notion of a real Tardigrade beggars belief but it seems to have been filmed running about like a piggy below!

It can't be long before it gets renamed the Specialgrade. :)
 
A Line or Two About Christmas

And the trusting infant sat on one of his four laps, clutched his pipe-cleaner claw, stared into his hidden eyes and asked,

"Santa, why have you got that prosthetic nose? Daddy says I will have one like that if I keep snorting like I do."

:eek:
 
You take that back! Tardigrades are cute.
... cute AND they are well hard ... they could even be used to set up life on other planets. This video's a bit silly but it gets to the point:

I'd like to formally submit the tardigrade as the FT's new mascot ...... flags, badges, stickers and everything :cool:


They've already got their own song .. they can sing !

 
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... cute AND they are well hard ... they could even be used to set up life on other planets. This video's a bit silly but it gets to the point:

I'd like to formally submit the tardigrade as the FT's new mascot ...... flags, badges, stickers and everything :cool:


Its cute piggy nose, its animated body-language, its vocal modulations, its open-neck shirt, its geeky glasses make that one the most adorable tardigrade yet! Only 27% of its DNA is human.

They never pan down to show its other arms. We can only imagine them multitasking away! :D

PS: Anyone else reminded of Sea Monkeys when we read of the ability of this creature to dehydrate like yeast?

We have a thread made earler!

More about them with illustrations here.

Could we train tardigrades to do back flips? :clap:


Furthermore: There was a dark side to the man who sold them! :eek:
 
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Re the Hank Green video...

  • why, as an Alabaman, does he sound so Canadian? Or at least vaguely Bostonion.
  • why is wearing a girl's shirt? OR mirror-reversed?
  • why does he also not mention the (to me) hugely-weird point about Tardigrades, namely, that they appear to be endoskeletal? Like you and I....name any other similarly-small creature that's internally boned?
 
Perhaps tardigrades have also absorbed some cat DNA and that's why they are so hard to kill. The tardigrade inherited the 9 lives thing from cats.
 
How Quirky is Berkeley? Eugene Tssui’s Fish House, Part 1

fishhouse_600w2-720x900.jpg


...
The house is designed based on the tardigrade, a segmented marine micro-animal. The tardigrade can survive extreme cold and extreme hot, extreme pressure or a vacuum, radiation doses, and can go without food or water for more than ten years.

When Tssui’s parents moved to Berkeley, they were concerned about earthquakes and wanted him to design a house in which they would be safe no matter what the Richter Scale said. Tssui consulted zoology and learned that the tardigrade is the most indestructible creature on the planet. True to his belief in biomimicry, he created a house based on the architecture of the lowly tardigrade. He believes that the Mathews Street house is safe from fire, earthquake, flood and pest.

Several neighbors from the block of 1920s California bungalows strenuously objected to the house design; the design review process dragged out more than a year. Tssui credits then-mayor Loni Hancock with stepping in and putting an end to the debate in the name of freedom of thought and design.

The house’s proper name is Ojo del Sol or Tai Yang Yen – the Sun’s Eye. The name alludes to the south-facing 15-foot oculus window, a common feature of Byzantine and Neoclassical architecture. The oculus here serves to light and warm the house. Tssui now uses the name given the house by the public, the Fish House, tardigrade or not. ...

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/11/30/how-quirky-is-berkeley-eugene-tssuis-fish-house-part-1/
 
That architecture seems very Gaudi-esque. Bit like the embellishments on La Sagrada Familia or the Gaudi Park in Barcelona.
 
It does look a lot more fish-like than tardigrade-like to me. Also are tardigrades really segmented?
 
I'm worried now that some still think the model in the still picture above is a real Tardigrade!
I may be the victim of a 'whoosh' here, but the first image in this thread is a real picture of a tardigrade alright.
Here are some more details
https://www.flickr.com/photos/katexic/22318923511/
Water bear (Macrobiotus sapiens) in moss. Color enhanced scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a water bear in its active state.
Colur-enhanced is one way of putting it; electron micrographs are monotone, so this really means 'colour has been added afterwards'.
 
I may be the victim of a 'whoosh' here, but the first image in this thread is a real picture of a tardigrade alright.
Here are some more details
https://www.flickr.com/photos/katexic/22318923511/

Colur-enhanced is one way of putting it; electron micrographs are monotone, so this really means 'colour has been added afterwards'.

Amazing! I had convinced myself - and maybe mislead others - into thinking it was a toy made out of canvas and an old water-filter cartridge! The moss looked like astroturf or a cheap tufted carpet!

In a manner of speaking, I suppose it is! The God who made the tardigrade had a sense of humour anyway! :D
 
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Worth mentioning these little beasties again:
Animal brought back to life after spending 30 years frozen
The waterbears were retrieved from frozen moss sample collected in Antarctica in 1983
By Adam Boult
7:24PM GMT 15 Jan 2016

Researchers have successfully revived microscopic creatures that had been kept frozen for 30 years.
Tardigrades, also known as waterbears or moss piglets, are tiny water-dwelling organisms. They're segmented, with eight legs, and measure 1mm in length.

Scientists at at Japan's National Institute of Polar Research retrieved the creatures from a frozen moss sample collected in Antarctica in 1983. The sample had been stored at −20 °C for just over three decades.
Two waterbears were resuscitated. One of them died after 20 days, but the other went on to successfully reproduce with a third specimen hatched from a frozen egg.
It laid 19 eggs, of which 14 hatched successfully.

Found throughout the world, tardigrades can survive extreme pressure, such as deep underwater, and can even live in the vacuum of space for several days.
When they're frozen, the creatures enter a state called cryptobiosis, in which their metabolic processes shut down, and they show no visible signs of life.
[Video]

"The present study extends the known length of long-term survival in tardigrade species considerably," said researchers.
The previous survival record for adult tardigrades under frozen conditions was eight years, and a much earlier study had suggested that the upper limit for survival under normal atmospheric oxygen conditions was about 10 years.

"We want to unravel the mechanism for long-term survival by looking into damage to tardigrades' DNA and their ability to repair it," said research lead Megumu Tsujimoto.
National Institute of Polar Research now plans to work on examining damage to the water bear's genes and its recovery functions to achieve a better understanding of its long-term survival mechanism.

Hardy though the tardigrades in this study undoubtedly were, they didn't beat the record for survival in a frozen state: that's currently held by a nematode worm that managed nearly 39 years.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...k-to-life-after-spending-30-years-frozen.html


 
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