The water bear bug may be the cutest dragon in Marvel movie history. Visual observation will dominate the screen for a week.

Li Li Niang went to see Ant Man 2 tonight. I know you haven't seen it yet, so I won't be a spoiler. However, knowing the following little thing is very helpful to watch the movie.

Note: do not break into their territory, although they are very cute, but they will really "eat" you!

As the chief water bear bug lover of fruit shell. (one of the questions I often encounter is: how cute is this thing?

Indeed, these little guys crawling around under the microscope, if they don't look carefully, they probably feel like a scaled-down version of the big-tailed maggot. But! Take a closer look at its little claws, it's really cute. If you don't believe me, keep looking.

Water bear bug? A bunch of cute things that are super small

The water bear worm (Water Bears) does not refer to a single species, it is actually a large group: Tardigrada. Yes, there is a whole gate, in which there are already thousands of known species, and there may be more species that have not yet been discovered.

Cute little girl with a huge family. Picture: fineartamerica

Of course, it is impossible to introduce more than a thousand species at once, so what we want to know here is a representative of the water bear world: Hypsibius dujardini, one of the most common water bear species.

This is its ID photo on wiki (whose ID photo is not yet confused). Picture: Bob Goldstein and Vicky Madden, UNC Chapel Hill / wikimedia commons

These little guys live in fresh water, feed on algae, and can settle down on moss. The "du" in their name comes from the French biologist F é lix Dujardin. The adult du's tall bear worm is about 0.5 mm long and can only be seen clearly with the help of a microscope.

You may need to feel its size with the help of the next scale; the picture shows Macrobiotussp under a scanning electron microscope. It can be clearly seen piercing the mouth of plant cells. Picture: SaguaroNPS / flickr

They are transparent and covered with waxy stratum corneum. The body consists of the head and four body segments, each with a pair of limbs and super cute little claws on each leg. A bear has only four claws, but a water bear bug has eight small claws, which is enough to show the superiority of the water bear bug as a sprout (fog).

A 3D rendering of the water bear bug, look at cute claws! Picture: letemps.ch

Toy company Takara Tomy launched du's high-birth bear worm twisting eggs. It is less than 5 centimeters long, almost 100 times the size of the real thing. Picture: window knocking on rain

A scientific adorable thing with super popularity

In the scientific community, du's high-birth bear bug is very popular, and many studies have chosen it as a subject. Scientists love it for two main reasons: first, it is relatively easy to raise in the laboratory, and it takes only two weeks to harvest the next generation; second, it is basically completely transparent. It is simply not more convenient to have a microscope to see all the anatomical structure and cell development. Now, the genome data of this kind of water bear worm have also been grasped by humans.

Design dialogue: hmmm. You've seen through it all! The picture shows a water bug that can be seen through under a microscope. Picture: Zachary Hawn / flickr

The Microbiology Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has also made a sculpture of water bears. Picture: Iso Brown FR / flickr

Of course, the most fascinating thing about water bears is their amazing tolerance to extreme environments. If you look at the extreme survival records left by those water bears, you will think that they can live to the end of the world.

Vacuum exposure in space? Not dead.

150 ℃ high temperature? Not dead.

Low temperature to-272 ℃? Not dead.

Ultra-high dose radiation greeting? It's okay. I'm gonna make it.

Little gift! Look, I'm alive and well. Picture: linnetmoss.com

In a paper published in 2017, three astrophysicists made some enlightening ideas: what kind of astrophysical catastrophe could kill all living things on Earth? Unsurprisingly, they chose the water bear bug as the last line of defense for creatures around the world. As for humans, they died crunchy long before that.

The water bear bug may be the most tenacious creature on earth. Picture: m.carroil, Sredni Eel / flickr

Attack, little monster! Picture: Martin Whitmore / flickr

The magic weapon of the water bear bug to resist the extreme environment is "hidden life"-taking off most of the water in the body and entering a dormant state where metabolism almost stops. When the environment is right, they can still wake up from dormancy and still look alive. Today, scientists are still exploring the details behind this process.

The hidden (pretending) living (dead) water bear worm is probably like this. Picture: elciudadano.cl

A super water bear? Not immortal.

The water bear bug is already quite famous for its incredibly powerful vitality, but I have to say that there are still some misunderstandings that need to be clarified.

First of all, the individual water bear is not immortal. In fact, they can not even "live a hundred years". If the hidden time of cheating is removed, the life span of a water bear bug is estimated to be only 3 to 30 months. Even with cryptogenesis, the longest clear record I know is to wake up after 30 years of frozen "sleep" (not du's high-born bear worm, another species found in Antarctic moss)-which is impressive, but not good enough to become a horror story.

I have to admit, people are also very good at cheating. Picture: edaccessible.com

Second, not all water bears are so powerful. Many jogging animals can survive periods of extreme environmental hardship through cryptogenesis, but not all of them; and their tolerance to cryptogenesis is different, and the Duchenne bear worm is not particularly powerful in it.

Three awkward water bears under a scanning electron microscope. Picture: Willow Gabriel

Finally, even if there is a strong hidden life, the water bear bug will not be able to ride out all the difficulties. They can't stand mechanical damage, so it's okay to run over a few-but don't do it, they're harmless to humans, and they're so cute, why...

Look for the water bug around you!

Water bear bugs are widely distributed, which means that you can actually go out and find a few, and they may live right next to you. Although there is no guarantee that you will see the one introduced today, it is not that difficult to find water bugs.

A little bit of moss is a sample? That's right. Picture: foldscope.com

Looking for water bears, lichens and moss on land is the best target, which can provide food and humid environment for water bears to survive. You can look for moss in the yard around you, cut off some moss with a blade and soak them fully with some clean water. Next, observe the water soaking the moss with a microscope, and it is possible to find the cuteness of the octopus crawling around.

Of course, don't miss the big cute thing with eight claws in Ant Man 2. Picture: Marvel

This article is a 2017 article on species Calendar, from the author of species Calendar @.

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