Tardigrade or ‘water bear’ will survive until the sun dies
The world’s most indestructible species — a stout, microscopic animal with four pairs of legs, known as the water bear or tardigrade — will survive until the sun dies, according to new research from Oxford University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Tardigrade may be little but they are the toughest form of life on Earth. The water-dwelling micro-animals are known to be able to live for up to 30 years without food or water. They can endure temperatures of up to 150 degrees Celsius, the deep sea, and the frozen vacuum of space. And they can even survive the risk of extinction from cosmic catastrophes — asteroids, supernovas, gamma ray bursts — and likely last for at least 10 billion years, far longer than the human race, according to the new study published in Scientific Reports. Not bad for an animal that grows to a maximum size of 0.5mm. “A lot of previous...