Organism of the week #31 – Tardigrades

Tardigrades make me squee. These little relatives of the arthropods and velvet-worms are found in the water around mosses, and they are quite easy to find if you have a cheap microscope and a little patience. Like spiders, they have eight legs, but unlike the legs of a spider, they’re plump and stumpy, and end in the little ‘fingers’ you can just about make out in the photos below. Ignoring the excess of legs, it’s easy to see why they’re sometimes called water-bears.

One of my first-year undergrads spotted this one in a sample of moss I pulled out of the down-pipe from my bathroom. The fact that my skin flakes and spittle contributed in some small way to this microteddy’s food-chain makes me feel about as paternal as it is possible for me to feel.