Tardigrades: pandas of the microworld!

[DavidBrown]

Tardigrades, also known as water-bears, are a group of animals that have panda-level cuteness and amazing attributes like being able to survive in the vacuum of space. They seem like they could make spectacularly charismatic zoo species, but for the fact that they are only 1mm long at the largest. Apparently they can be seen quite easily in a microscope and their main habitat are lichens and mosses (another common name for the animal is moss-piglet).

Has anybody ever seen a live tardigrade?

Has anybody ever seen an exhibit dedicated to them in a zoo, aquarium, or natural history or science museum?

Here is an exhibit challenge for all of you exhibit designers out there who want to work on a new frontier of animal charisma...

A blog dedicated to cute pictures of tardigrades:
water bear | Tumblr

Some basic information:
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade]Tardigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Dassie rat]

The Paris Menagerie had a Micro Zoo, which replaced the Elephant House. Here, people could look at various small animals under microscopes. I think it would be a good idea to include tardigrades and other small animals in zoos. Tardigrades have amazing powers of survival and could become cult zoo animals if the microscopes could be used to focus images onto a screen. Most animal phyla are not shown in zoos. Several years ago, the freshwater tank in BUGS at London Zoo had some planarian flatworms, which made a nice change, but I don't think they were meant to be there. The Queensland Museum in Brisbane had some living roundworms and I think a collection of parasites would interest visitors.

 

[DavidBrown]

Here is a video of an interesting guy who does citizen-science on tardigrades. He did a tardigrade survey of New Jersey. There is good video of tardigrades and unique aspects of their biology.

 

[DavidBrown]

A good overview of tardigrades has been published in the New York Times.
If a zoo could find a way to exhibit these critters it might be very interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/s...s&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

 

[lintworm]

@DavidBrown, Tardigrades are being exhibited in Micropia in Artis Zoo in Amsterdam.

 

[DavidBrown]

This thread is almost 10 years old, so I am bumping it to see if there are any more tardigrade exhibits in the zoo world beyond the one at Micropia at Artis Zoo. Has anybody seen one anywhere?

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

It is possible to buy live Tardigrade cultures; the School I taught at did, and we regularly displayed living Tardigrades on open days, as well as in various lessons.

 

[LaughingDove]

I've found wild tardigrades in the UK before - you just need to try various bits of moss under a microscope until you find one. Rotifers are more common when doing this however and they're a similar sort of size and appearance at first glance to tardigrades.

 

[LaughingDove]

Here's a picture of a tardigrade (noted with arrow, it's crawling on a grain of dirt/sand).


Not sure what species it is, but it's not Hypsibius dujardini/exemplaris which is much more transparent and is the species available to buy and grow in culture and is presumably the species at Micropia.