
how to survive death – a tardigrade’s guide
Tardigrades are perhaps the most resilient creatures on earth. While ‘surviving death’ may be a bit of a stretch, I admit, they are able to survive extreme situations like intense temperatures, starvation and even vacuum. How?
By entering cryptobiosis! This is a death-like state in which the organism’s metabolism is radically slowed or even halted. When the environment is habitable again, the tardigrades ‘wake up’ from this state and continue along their way.
In this short animation I illustrated this process in the most simplified way possible.