protozoan commonly known as the “water bear” is an extremophile that has engaged many in the scientific community. The Tardigrade is an invertebrate that has eight legs and comes in many shapes and sizes. This group has many adaptations such as cryptobiosis that allows it to survive in extreme environments. The Tardigrade can be found from land, to water, to sulfur springs, and to over 25 species found in the frozen tundra of Antarctica (Miller et al, 2001). To understand these creatures this paper
glance these creatures may not make a big impression considering their small stature and unimpressive frame. Soon we learn that although these creatures are funny to look at they can survive in any place in the world you can think of because of cryptobiosis. It is mainly dependent on moisture to survive. They can reproduce asexually and often time consume their habitat making them pretty self-reliable. Tardigrades meaning slow walker, are animals that grow as small as 0.1 millimeter and as big as
The Narwhal, Monodon monoceros, is a social, specialized deep-water marine mammal characterized by a unique tooth growth protruding from the upper jaw. Narwhals lives along the coasts and rivers throughout the Arctic,characterized by icy ocean temperatures. Narwhals are usually found in groups of 15 to 20, but herds of several thousand have been seen in the Arctic waters since 1871. Regularly found eastwards from the Canadian Arctic to central Russia they have also been distributed throughout the
In the early development process of many organisms, it is important to be able to minimize exposure to agents of stunted or arrested development. By decreasing the mortality rate for a generation of a species, that species is given an advantage in later reproduction; by increasing the number of organisms of the same species within a limited environment, more organisms of the same species are able to reproduce, resulting in an augmented overall population ("Reproduction and Development", 2013). However