True Facts: The Incredible Tardigrade

this episode of true facts is sponsored by curiositystream smart tv for your smart tv see what they did there almost any place on earth where there is water even just a tiny bit you can find these little fellows these are animals in the phynum tardigrada and are called tardigrades or water bears tardigrades come in two main flavors you tardigrades mainly live in fresh water they are smooth and plump like a gummy bear that might pop in your mouth like a grape heterotardigrades on the other hand are not smooth they come with horns and spikes and plate-like armor some live in fresh water while others live in the salt water of the sea the smooth you tardigrades are sometimes called moss piglets because they can be found living in the fresh water that is trapped within mosses and lichens they are quite small on average only about a half a millimeter small enough that a moss cup provides a perfect aquatic playground to get a closer look we'll have to use our imagination a bit in most microscope footage you see the animal from above or below sort of like pov pornography and it doesn't help that they can be quite see-through but as we look closer keep in mind that in three dimensions they are squat stubby cute little things jerry what the hell is that one that's not real what do you mean how did i know well making it black and white doesn't change anything jerry and you can't have a scale bar that just says the word small on it that's not how it works all tardigrades are built in roughly the same way they have a head with a weird little kissy mouth hole most have two little eye spots which are limited like you wouldn't ask one to read the menu for you after the head comes three body segments each with a pair of legs finally they have a butt segment which also has a pair of legs except that this pair is put on backwards we'll get to that in a minute the outside of the tardigrade is made out of flexible chitin chitin jerry that one made of poop but don't focus on it yet how good now it's stuck to its foot chitin is what is found in the exoskeletons of arthropods and like many arthropods tardigrades need to occasionally shed their outsides in order to grow they are essentially a fluid-filled sac those little things that look like water beads in a stress ball are salomocytes storage cells that move freely throughout the body cavity salomocytes may also have an immune jerry what is that no it isn't no i can tell it's not real well that's science isn't a style of photography jerry mussels that run along the sides of the tardigrade's body help move those little water balloon legs in most tardigrades the legs end in a nest of tiny chitin claws these claws are very good at navigating the tangled surfaces of moss or aquatic plants they are less good at navigating the glass slides used in microscopy it's like if an alien studied your behavior by putting you in a skating rink in dress shoes oops well that's embarrassing run away run away tardigrades in the genus battleleapus however have a very different sort of footing they live below the tide in places where they have to hang on to the smooth surfaces of sand grains instead of claws they have cute little toes that end in leaf-like paddles these paddles have adhesive properties and can be flipped down to hold on or up to let go you might have noticed that they drag those back legs a bit but those toes become important if they have to back up or hold on tight this one is hungry and looking for what's it doing jerry he's walking on the ceiling again we'll tell him to get down this one is hungry and looking for diatoms to eat as a snack they're the little tic tac looking things he's got one stuck to his foot he's a bit of a mess and that's the problem with having horns and spikes and things all kinds of crap gets stuck on them don't teach you that in dragon school anywho diatoms are single-celled micro algae they live alone or in colonies and come in lots of different shapes i mean it's a healthy snack you get your vitamins here's the problem though they're encased in a hard shell of silica which is the stuff that makes quartz it's kind of like if doritos came individually packaged in glass tardigrade don't give a crap look at that sucks the insides right out they are able to puncture through the hard outer wall because they have some crazy stuff happening inside their mouth holes for a closer look here is atari grade in the genus hypsibius it's sucking down the algae chlorella like it was a kale flavored capri sun on either side of their mouth tube tardigrades have stylettes made from the mineral aragonite these are essentially two hard needles that can puncture through cell walls it's kind of like if the people who made wolverine had been dentists that round looking thing in the back is the pharynx which acts a bit like the bulb of a pipette sucking the juices back in towards the tum-tum but they're not all vegetarians here's a silliette getting sensuous with a clump of dirt but minding its own business i mean no judgment if you were covered in fingers you'd be doing that too but a tardigrade will come right over and ruin that party i mean don't mess with the moss piglet the food gets passed back into the tummy parts nutrients are absorbed into the body while the waste forms tiny crystals you can see the crystals light up using polarized light and yes you know where i'm going with this they freaking poop crystals puts things into perspective doesn't it i mean what can you do not that i mean look at it it's beautiful looks like a little galaxy and now a message about our sponsor do you like curiosity well how about a whole stream of it take a curiosity shower curiosity stream has thousands of streamable documentaries and non-fiction television programs on all sorts of things listen i'm a fan i got sucked in learned all about legos but they have history and science and food and everything else you might be interested in there are also 35 collections of there's david attenborough show off there are also 35 collections of curated programs hand pick when i don't know how else you'd do it but hand picked by experts not some random people off the street incredibly it's only 14.99 for the entire year and you can stream to any device anytime anywhere i'm personally a fan and happy to have their support use code z-e-f-r-a-n-k to sign up where were we oh right now the tardigrades that live on land in the water trapped in mosses for example have a bit of a challenge to overcome mosses dry out and that means that the tardigrades dry out too and this isn't just some pass me the lip balm i'm feeling a bit chapped sort of drying this is the real deal like 97 of the water in the tardigrade's body disappears i mean you're more like a powder at this point now for most creatures the technical term for this would be getting very dead but when water is reintroduced to their environment these tardigrades puff right back up and go about their business you know that's got to feel pretty good right there like drinking a big glass of gatorade on a hangover kind of good this state that they enter where all measurable metabolic activity stops is called cryptobiosis a number of creatures do this like the rotifer freaking show off what with their little tickly fingers and the water juggling but you can dry the hell out of them and they'll come right back same thing with nematodes well maybe not this one jerry i think this one's dead but you can imagine it tardigrades however are exceptional at this cryptobiosis business they can be revived after decades in this state and this has to do with how they prepare themselves as they begin to dry out they form what is called a ton first they reduce their body's surface area by contracting their muscles and pulling in their little eggs this slows down the water loss and buys them extra time meanwhile all the cool stuff is happening at the level of the individual cell the trick is how to stabilize and protect the structure of things as the water disappears kind of like packing up christmas ornaments so that they don't get tangled and broken and then vacuum sealing them the outside of the cell the cell membrane for example is a layer of molecules which are spaced out just right by molecules of water some sugars like trellos can replace those water molecules and keep the membrane from bunching up and becoming leaky but that's not enough so the cells begin to manufacture all sorts of specialized proteins intrinsically disordered proteins lack a defined shape and are floppy floppy like cooked spaghetti these seem to act almost like styrofoam packing noodles within the cell holding organelles in place and making sure things don't stick together as the cell shrinks but here's the thing it gets even crazier some can survive temperatures below negative 270 degrees celsius you know why they create ice nucleating proteins that cause crystals to form away from membranes that can be damaged in a ton state a tardigrade can survive radiation a thousand times the level that would kill you they got a protein for that too binds right to the dna and protects it and you know what the scientists did they took them to outer space and then they opened the jar not inside outside to the freaking vacuum of space jerry is that poop did you make space out of tardigrade poop well it's very good so you know what happened after they put them in friggin space they brought them back down added some water and they were fine started making babies they're not the scientists the tardigrades and let me tell you they're perverts that time i meant the scientists but the tardigrades are perverts too some species are parthenogenic which means that they can reproduce by themselves solo think masturbation with consequences others require both a male and a female to get the job done in most cases it works something like this big ass eggs form in the female's body then she gets ready to molt and her outside skin or cuticle loosens up and separates from her new cuticle next if there's a suitable mail about she lays her eggs into her old skin as she wriggles out of it then the male fertilizes the eggs by depositing sperm into that egg filled skin bag i told you they were perverts after a week or two the little babies will emerge from their shells and then have to crawl out of the lifeless skin of their mother that their father ejaculated into listen it's kind of like if your partner had a sunburn and their skin started to peel a little and your instinct oh no that's graphic isn't it well it is how a tardigrade do sure some of them need therapy on tiny moss couches what was your earliest memory pass can i pass [Music] well no jerry i'm not going to use it well i'll tell you why those are eggs of a chicken and i can tell it stop playing dicky dicky in the sand what does that mean no we can't sell that as merch jerry there's staples in [Music] let's take it off you

Channel: zefrank1

Views: 1,415,348

Rating: 4.9742765 out of 5

Keywords: ze frank, zefrank, tardigrade, moss piglet, waterbear, tun, batillipes

Id: HsStKuWHI_c

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/crackhappy]

Never change, zefrank

[u/provoko]

that was hilarious, enjoyed it, and I learned

however I would have liked to see some 3d models of that cryptobiosis, under electron microscope or similar

[u/LesbianSpiders]

Fuck these god damn idiots. If you feel the same come on over to /r/tardigradehate