The Tardigrades are famous for their extreme durability, but new research shows the good level they have to walk despite their adolescence. of size and splattered bodies.
The Tardigrades present an incomparable curriculum. These microscopic extremophiles can withstand an absurd amount of stress, such as freezing temperatures, intense radiation, dehydration, and even state fired from a cannon. But tardigrades “also show remarkable robustness in their daily activities,” he said research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In fact, these eight-legged animals can be found all over the Earth, requiring them to explore wet leaves, sandy deserts, Antarctic mosses and lichens, and underground soils. Consequently, tardigrades, also known as water bones or moss piglets, have evolved “a set of uniquely versatile locomotor tools,” as biologists write in their study. Jasmine Nirody, a member of the Center for the Study of Physics and Biology at Rockefeller University, is the lead author of the paper.
The tardigrades are among the smallest animals on Earth and they are also the smallest animals known to have legs. Normally, animals at this scale move by beating, moving, and sliding, but tardigrades can actually walk.
This is not a big deal for animals on a macro scale, but physics works a little differently for the little ones creatures. Viscous and inertial forces make it much more difficult to navigate the substrates.
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“An analogy would be if we had to walk through a tub of something really thick and viscous, for example, honey or peanut butter,” Nirody explained in an email. “Therefore, we might expect that the ‘ideal’ strategies for tardigrades would be different from those of larger animals,” he said, adding, “I even walk immersed in a pool different from what I do on the sidewalk.”
In addition, tardigrades, like other microscopic creatures, are soft-bodied, with no internal or external skeleton. They’re basically gummy bears (sup, supposedly), but gummy bones that have to move despite not having bones.
“When we walk, we usually pull on the ground with our hind legs to jump forward [and] this is possible because we have rigid bones that act as a stick to “jump it,” Nirody explained. “But if this pole is a noodle, we have to use different strategies.”
Nirody and colleagues set out to learn more about these strategies. To this end, the team captured videos of the late black species Hypsibius dujardini, measuring his steps, tracking his gait and carefully observing the placement of the feet as they moved from place to place.
As the videos show, tardigrades “use their claws as hooks to grab them, so they reach out and grab the substrate and pull the body forward,” Nirody said. “This is largely based on the fact that the substrate will be rigid and will not yield.”
Once the team realized that this was how the tardigrades moved, they raised the hypothesis that changing the stiffness of the substrate would affect their gait. Subsequent tests showed that this was the case.
That the tardigrades had a regular passing pattern was a surprise to researchers. Nirody and her colleagues entered the studio with the preconceived notion that tardigrades are “clumsy, silly walkers,” she said, but they seem to have regular coordination.
“And that makes sense, if you think about it more closely: there are thousands of late-species that live and move through almost every environment imaginable,” Nirody said. “This is quite successful, and it doesn’t get so bad in locomotion, which is crucial to finding food, mates, all that’s important for survival.”
And walk they did. During quiet walks, tardigrades moved at half body length per second, and during sprints this increased to two body lengths per second. Interestingly, the delayed gait, or style of walking, did not change with speed, and the gait was reminiscent of insects 500,000 times their size.
It is unclear whether tardigrades and insects acquired these skills from a shared common ancestor or if they developed this ability to walk independently (an example of convergent evolution). Either way, Nirody said: the answer will be fascinating, as it could provide new insights into the evolution of multi-legged walking and the biological “circuits” responsible for behavior.
ThResearch may also have implications for microrobotics and nanotechnology. I imagine machines similar to tardigrades capable of moving through the human body, supplying medication, and performing complicated repair tasks. Similar microscopic machines could also operate on synthetic systems, transporting cargo to hard-to-reach places and weaving tiny components. It only makes sense that we use water bears as models for microscopic machines. The tardigrades are really impressive, and we would do well to copy nature well to work.
Month: Scientists fired tardigrades from a weapon to test a theory about aliens.