Tardigrade

Maybe I find some tardigrades if I’m lucky!

This is how my last post ended. Guess what? I found one!

Late March during Easter time, I took some moss from a tree trunk. Like before I put it on some water. I took a sample and initially didn’t find anything moving. Then I saw another rotifer, the hero of my last blog post. After following it awhile, I found something new.

It was a similar size to rotifer but had legs. I was pretty sure I had found a tardigrade, or water bear as they’re sometimes called.

They are known for their extreme resilience. I’ve heard that these small creatures can survive extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, radiation, dehydration, and starvation. They have even survived exposure to outer-space!

After looking at the tardigrade for a while, I had a break and did something else. When I came back, the water in my sample was dried out, oops. I felt a bit bad, did I accidentally kill the water bear?

But I remembered that these guys are supposed to be resilient! Little dehydration shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe I can just add water and make it rise from the grave.

I took some water with a pipette and added to the specimen glass where the tardigrade was before.

Then I looked around with the microscope to find the little friend. I found it but it wasn’t moving. Oh no.

At this point I was reading how tardigrades are so resilient. I found out that they have a system where they replace the water with sugar or something. When water is added they reverse the process. Sounds to me like… a sugar coma! Haha.

It took some time but the tardigrade began moving a little bit. A while longer and now it was moving and trying to swim again.

I felt like doctor Frankenstein. It feels so cool to be able to do simple experiments like this at home these days. Even with a kiddie microscope.

Now that temperatures are rising and summer is coming, I’m excited about what I’m going to discover next!