Washington – When we talk about “extreme” animals, the tardigrade easily takes the cake: Also known as the water bear, the tardigrade is a microscopic critter (just 1.5 mm across, at most!) that can withstand just about anything.
So it’s no surprise that the water bear is the clear star of the American Natural History Museum’s latest exhibit, “Life at the Limits.”
The exhibit, open from April 4 until January 3, 2016 features a whole host of other plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi that dive the deepest, live the longest, and in the weirdest conditions.
When I visited a few days before the opening, I got to sniff a flower that mimics rotting flesh to attract insects (conclusion: smell it once for science, then never again), learn about everything from deep-diving manatees to weight-lifting beetles, and meet a living mantis shrimp, the species famous for seeing in a level of technicolor we can’t even comprehend with our puny human brains.
Washington Post-Bloomberg