Amsterdam museum Micropia, the world's first museum devoted solely to microbes, made a giant chair in the shape of the microscopic, water-dwelling, seemingly invincible creature also referred to as "water bear" or "moss piglet."
Neil deGrasse Tyson popularized this adorable creature in a 2014 episode of his space television show "Cosmos," in which he fawned over their 500-million-year survival on Earth — through our planet's five most recent mass extinctions.
Check out some neat facts and awesome photos by museum visitors below:
Though they appear much larger here, tardigrades can grow up to 500 micrometers in size — about five times the size of a human egg cell.
A photo posted by Elena Carmo (@hlenyta)
They're often referred to as "nature's toughest animal" because they can survive in many different environments, including boiling water, solid ice, and even space. They're even quite resilient in a museum:
A photo posted by Subbotini (@subbotini) on Jun 22, 2015 at 5:24am PDT
When they're forced into conditions that would normally kill them, such as an extreme waterless environment, they can squeeze all of the water out of their bodies and replace it with the sugar trehalose.
A photo posted by kelly Wieck (@kelwieck) on Feb 26, 2015 at 8:19am PST
Swedish scientist K. Ingemar Jonsson flung a sample of dehydrated tardigrades into space in 2007 to see how they'd survive exposure to the vacuum and solar radiation. As expected, about 70% of these bad boys survived the trip.
