Tardigrades

[Nagual]

I once talked about some kind of bugs that could suspend their life for years by removing the water from their bodies, but I could not recall their names; and someone seemed interested.

I just saw them on TV again.  They are called Tardigrades, or "Water Bears".

Tardigrades are capable of living in even the most extreme environments due, in part, to an almost unique talent for surviving in a dehydrated, "cryptobiotic" state which they can maintain for years at a time, like instant oatmeal.

http://www.palaeos.com/Invertebrates/Arthropods/Tardigrada/Tardigrada.html

Tardigrades are survivors par excellence, the best in the animal kingdom. They can survive many environmental extremes by converting themselves into a 'tun'. This involves them pulling in their legs to give their body a cylindrical shape and then shutting down all their metabolism. any other animal that is exhibiting zero metabolism is considered to be dead. Only tardigrades regularly return to life again from this state. They perform this miracle by replacing the water in their membrane lipids with a sugar called trehalose. Different species have different survival characteristics and not all species form a tun, deep sea species, which can survive pressures as great as 6000 atmospheres for instance do not.

Other species have been known to survive temperatures as low as -272 for a few minutes which is a close to absolute zero as you ever want to get, colder than outer space. They have also survived temperatures as low as -200 for more than 20 days. Other species can go to the other extreme and survive temperatures as high as 125C well above the boiling point of water. still others survive doses of X-rays 250 times greater than that which would kill a mammal. Tardigrades are the only animals that can survive having their photo taken in an Scanning Electron Microscope which involves placing them in a vacuum and then bombarding them with electrons. Species which survive periods of drought i.e. extreme dehydration have been revived after lying dormant for 120 years amongst the dried mosses in a botanical museum. There is no doubt that tardigrades could travel to the stars amongst the dust on a piece of rock were the earth ever to be destroyed. Scientists don't really know what their limits are but we do know they are the toughest animals alive for sure.

http://www.earthlife.net/inverts/tardigrada.html

[manuel]

wow thats so cool!.

[Nagual]

On the same topic...

Frogs open door to icy mystery
Amphibians' Lazarus act may aid organ transplants
By David A. Fahrenthold

WASHINGTON - This is the way a wood frog freezes:

First, as the temperature drops below 32 degrees, ice crystals start to form just beneath the frog's skin. The normally pliant and slimy amphibian becomes — for lack of a better word — slushy.

Then, if the mercury continues to fall, ice races inward through the frog's arteries and veins. Its heart and brain stop working, and its eyes freeze to a ghostly white.

"Imagine an ice cube. Paint it green," and you've got the wood frog in winter, said Ken Storey, a professor at Carleton University in Ontario. The frog is solid to the touch and makes a mini-thud when dropped.

Lazarus reborn
But it is not dead. When a thaw comes, the frog is able to melt back into its normal state over a period of several hours, restart its heart and hop away, unscathed.

This amazing process of reanimation — repeated every winter in the woods of Maryland, Virginia and the District — is being examined by scientists hoping to learn the secrets of the frog and other animals that freeze solid.

...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6700752/