The Water Bear

The Water Bear
Jonas Buchholz
English 7, Per: 6
May 19, 2003
The Water Bear
Have you ever seen a bear with eight legs? Many people don’t know about it
but when you are playing on grass or in nature you are always playing on bears
with eight legs. They are so little that you can’t see them without a microscope.
They are called the water bears or by their Latin name: Phylum Tardigrada.
There are very interesting things about a water bear:
• What it is
• The mystic of a water bear
• Some of the 600 discovered different kinds of water bears
• Other interesting things
A water bear is a microscopic little bear with eight legs. It looks brown and
see-through. It lives in wet things like moss and grass or in
the ocean and in rivers. A good place to live for the water
bear is in the moss on the roof. But when the rain is coming
it always floods the poor water bears away (Look at the
picture). It is a vegetarian so it eats moss, grass, and other
green stuff, but some kinds of water bears are eating other
little animals like annelids. His Latin name (Phylum Tardigrada) means “slow
walker”. The first guy who found a water bear was Pastor Johann August
Ephraim Goeze in 1773. When he found it he said: “Strange is this little animal,
because of its exceptional and strange morphology and because it closely
resembles a bear en miniature. That is the reason why I decided to call it little
water bear”
How to find a water bear:
You take some moss and put it into water. After a day you can take it out and
take a little drop from the dirty water. You put this drop on a cover glass and
with a microscope you search in the drop for water bears. When you don’t find
one you have to take some new drops because the water bears are well hidden,
although in one gram of moss there should be 22,000 water bears. If you find
one don’t let the water dry up because the water bear could die because of this
hotness. So, when there is not much water on the cover glass put some water on
it.
This picture has been taken by myself in 2001 and shows the head of a water bear.
There is one question about which many scientists are not sure. The question
is: “Is the water bear an alien?” One half of the bionic scientists say that it is just
a little animal like annelids. The other half says it could be an alien but they are
not sure. The reason why it could be an alien is the following:
When the environment around a water bear becomes very dry and the water
slowly dries up the whole water bear shrivels into a little ton. (Now you maybe
think: “But why did he write above that the water bear dies when it’s too dry?”
When the water bear becomes a ton it has to dry very slowly.) In this condition
the water bear takes the oxygen it needs from little balls inside of its body. Now
it is almost immortal. It doesn’t become older (that does not mean that it never
become old, in the normal condition it becomes older), it don’t have to eat and
hotness (+96 degrees Celsius), coldness (-273 degrees Celsius, absolute zero!!!),
radiation and vacuum can’t hurt or kill it. Only if it’s hotter than +96 degrees
Celsius the water bear could maybe die. Another point is that there is no old
fossil or in amber concluded water bear. So the one half of scientist that says the
water bear is a little animal like annelids can’t show that the water bear lives
here a million years ago, and there is no real affinity between the water bear and
another animal. So imagine that the water bear came in his ton condition with a
meteorite on earth. That could be, couldn’t it? He can survive all the things that
endanger him. Just when he comes in contact with water he will be a moving
water bear again.
Milnesium tardigradum:
This water bear lives in Europe and is the most common
water bear there. It is very different from other water
bears, special his motor activity and his body form. Most
of the water bears are difficult to find but this water bear
could been found by an amateur. It’s one of the very few
water bears that eats other animals. This water bear is
very imperishable. It looks more like a fish than other
water bears and it is 0.5 millimeter long.
Pseudobiotus megalonyx:
This water bear is one of the biggest
tardigrada. Females can reach a body
length of more than 1 mm. This tardigrada
can be found quite numerous (up to 3.000
animals in 100 ml sediment) in the mud
flats of the lower elbe river (Germany).
Macrobiotus areolatus:
This water bear is different from the
others because of his claws. There are
longer. It is much faster than some other
water bears. The body is white (seethrough) or brown but never red.
There are some really curios places were some water bears were found. Let’s
take a look on the globe.
How you can see is there a little dot on the globe. This is the location of a
water bear who was found by someone. You also see that it is in the middle of
the Atlantic ocean. There is no island. The weird thing is that water bears can’t
swim. But how can it survive on the water surface? Du Bois-Reymond Marcus
knows the answer. The little water bear Styraconyx Sargassi was found on
December 21 1930 on a floating Sargassum alga. So it swims around the world.
The water bear Coronarctus tenellus was found in the India Sea and in the
Atlantic Ocean in downs of 400 to 3700 meter! The water bear Thermozodium
esakii was found in a very hot font in the near of Nagasaki. Kichin (water bear
expert) said to this: "A third class of tardigrada, the Mesotardigrada, was
established on the basis of the description of Thermozodium esakii by Rahm
(1937). This species was discovered in a hot spring near Nagasaki, Japan.
However, since neither type material nor type locality has survived to the
present day, and no other species of mesotardigrade has yet further been
described, this poorly documented group will not be discussed any further here."
Then there was a French message that describes following:
The French archaeologist Janot Lamberton who went into a glacier to break a
record found water bears in ton condition. That was in 202 meter depth in ice!
This is just a picture from the weirdest water bear of the world. It’s the only
water bear that have horns. Doesn’t it look like a little devil? You can find it in
Hungary (if you ever come there).
Worked Cited Page
Mach, Martin. “The monthly water bears Journal.” Journals. July 2000. No
sponsor. November 2001. < http://www.baertierchen.de/ >
Buchholz, Jonas. “Is the water bear an alien?” 2 Tests. February 2002.
Hochschule Bremen. 10 May 2003. < http://buchholz.hsbremen.de/genealogy/nachkomme/images/400.pdf >