This Tardigrade Survived Outer Space

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]It survived five mass [music] extinctions, outer space, a vacuum, radiation that would kill you a thousand times over, and it is smaller than a grain of sand.

[00:00:10]Water bear, tardigrada, every continent on Earth, including Antarctica.

[00:00:16]When threatened, it shuts down all biological functions, entering cryptobiosis.

[00:00:21]No heartbeat, no metabolism, virtually indestructible for decades at a time.

[00:00:27]NASA sent tardigrades to the International Space Station. They survived unprotected in the vacuum [music] of space, but the ecosystems that sustain them, moss, lichen, soil, are being destroyed by pollution and climate change.

[00:00:41]Comment save if the toughest animal on Earth deserves our protection.