As I had occasion to mention, the modern taxonomy is becoming increasingly complex, which only makes more and more remote the possibility that the peasants (you all) sooner or later acquire a minimal basis of this science, at least as we can tell the difference between a caterpillar and an anaconda. Even those few who have, in general culture, a smattering minimum, to stop gross division like "vertebrates vs. invertebrates" without imagining that vertebrates are in fact only a small fraction of the phylum that vanishes in a sea of \u200b\u200bother , larger and more numerous, from the family as the Arthropods and Mollusks than the almost unknown to the general public, such as tardigrades. But what they are, then, the tardigrades? Small creatures with eight short stubby legs nails, and a vaguely segmented body (they are a sister group of arthropods, in fact), who live almost everywhere in the world, but they are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye and can "swim" in that some moisture collected in mosses and lichens. What have they so special? Poliestremofili are: an extremophile is an organism that can survive a certain type of extreme conditions, so a poliestremofilo will be a body capable of resisting many types of extreme conditions. In fact, our tardigrades (for some reason in English called "water bears" even though more than a bear look like Jabba the Hutt) are considerably fucksters: they can survive very high temperatures (151 degrees) or near zero (-272) may hold out for ten years was dehydrated, can withstand a pressure of 1200 atmospheres, and can survive a dose of radiation more than 1000 times greater than that which would kill a man. The state of low metabolism, which owe their extraordinary superpowers criptobiosi is called, and has allowed some tardigrades to survive for ten days in space, where "space" is not understood in a spaceship, but in the open space, without air, food or water, freezing temperatures and rain radiation. In fact there is enough to suspect that any tardigrades is actually a tiny fragment of Chuck Norris, except that Chuck Norris can not be broken.
Mai.
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