5 Fun Facts About the Tardigrade 1. They were called ‘little water bears’ due to the way…

5 Fun Facts About the Tardigrade 1. They were called ‘little water bears’ due to the way they walk. This was coined by the German naturalist Johann August Ephraim Goeze who first described them back in 1773. 2. They can be killed, eventually. Perhaps inspired by those intelligent and highly-scientific questions from point 2, you may be wondering what would happen if you tried to kill a tardigrade. 3. Living for hundreds of years is a myth. While they may sound invincible, tardigrades typically live from 3 to 30 months and only have a few weeks of ‘active’ life. 4. A dehydrated tardigrade is known as a ‘tun’. If a tardigrade loses 99% of its body water content, it goes into cryptobiosis where it suspends it’s living processes. 5. A new species was found to resist intence ultraviolet radiation.