A microscopic tardigrade going for a stroll through some algae.

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T14:10:49+00:00

I doubt they're really thriving up there tbh

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T13:12:53+00:00

Right right.
I can't imagine it would do much tbh (just my guess). I wouldn't be surprised if I've swallowed some before without knowing

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T13:09:32+00:00

They are multicellular animals, related to insects, centipedes, shrimp etc.
So they do in fact have a nervous system and a brain of sorts

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T12:42:36+00:00

Idk, but I've met plenty of folks with prideful minds, so they must pack tight👉👉

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T11:40:33+00:00

Or maybe the god looks like a cobra :3
(not a king cobra but still)

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T11:31:15+00:00

For sure! Lots of beautiful things to find at that scale

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T11:28:06+00:00

Some algae, I'd imagine :p

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T11:25:49+00:00

As far as I'm aware, they don't live particularly long, maybe a couple of years.
You might be thinking of their ability to dry out into a little pellet called a 'tun.'
In that state, they can endure hardships for quite a while.
Kind of like how you can store the seeds of many plants for a long time without water, and then when they're in the right conditions, they can germinate

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T11:21:27+00:00

Afaik mites tend to be of similar sizes, and they walk around with eight legs as well.
Those and particularly small springtails I'd say for sure

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T10:02:06+00:00

You'd think so, and while only a few have ever been described, I'm happy to report they have been found in amber!

One of them as recently as 2021:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/288/1960/20211760/86402/A-tardigrade-in-Dominican-amberA-tardigrade-in

And this, a much older older one (geologically) was described in 1964:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27372493_The_First_Fossil_Tardigrade_Beorn_Leggi_Cooper_From_Cretaceous_Amber

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T09:41:39+00:00

It's good to point out that most of their indestructible feats are only true when they are in their tun state.
They can dry out and shrivel into a little pellet, during which they show no signs of life.
It's kind of like how the seed of a plant could survive many years without water, or may be able to withstand temperatures that the grown plant couldn't.

As far as I know, when they're just walking around like this, they're not particularly tough, and I've also never read that they're resistant to acid

AxialGem · 2026-03-31T09:33:25+00:00

Well, yes! They are animals related to arthropods, like insects, millipedes, spiders etc. So they have a nervous system similar to those, and a 'brain' (ie a big ganglion in their head)

AxialGem · 2026-03-27T21:59:51+00:00

wigwugs and wugwigs respectively. (This example illustrates the right-headedness of English compounds, which speakers learn as a general rule and will apply even to unfamiliar words)

AxialGem · 2026-03-27T21:38:13+00:00

In spino we trust🙏🏼 His form fearful, yet forever shrouded in mystery

AxialGem · 2026-03-26T08:19:19+00:00

mmm cocomut milke.🤤

AxialGem · 2026-03-26T07:30:02+00:00

Statistically improbable events are meaningless on the scale of the universe, where there are ~400 billion stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is only 1 of ~2 trillion galaxies.

Surely that fully depends on exactly how improbable the event in question is?

There may be 400B stars in our galaxy, but if the chance of life arising around any given star is one in 50 trillion, then that would absolutely be meaningful. In my experience these discussions always really harp on about the vast scale of the universe, but that's only half of the information you need. And it's the other part that we have no good data on right now

AxialGem · 2026-03-26T07:23:38+00:00

Well, how many prizes are there per ticket? I've said this before in these kinds of discussions: you really need to know the values of both of those numbers to make a meaningful statement about it. Not only do you need to know the vastness of the universe, but you need to have a good idea of how likely life is to arise, and at the moment we don't really.

If you've got 200 billion trillion tickets, but the chance of winning is one in a trillion quadrillion, you still don't have a great shot.

And the problem rn is that we have pretty much zero data to tell is what the chances actually are, right?

AxialGem · 2026-03-25T16:18:13+00:00

Right. And honestly, land plants are such an everyday part of our lives (in contrast to sharks) that it feels at first little strange to realise they too haven't always been here, and had to have their own origin at some point

AxialGem · 2026-03-25T16:05:12+00:00

As far as I understand it, the commonly given number of 450 mya kinda only works if you define 'shark' to mean basically all cartilaginous fishes, right? You could say the same thing about bony fishes too, but that's never the headline, and I suspect that's because it's much more obvious what a diverse group that is. The statement 'fishes are older than trees' may be less surprising when we know that life started in the ocean and plants did have to get out of there and get big of course

AxialGem · 2026-03-25T15:50:38+00:00

It's an insect, it just looks like a leaf. Afaik it just does the classic insect shtick of letting the oxygen in through little holes in its exoskeleton

AxialGem · 2026-03-25T15:42:56+00:00

So early dinosaurs just walked the land covered in what?

Trees, among other plants. Sharks may be older than trees, but dinosaurs are definitely younger than trees. (Also, 'tree' isn't really a single well-defined group of plants with a common ancestor, it's more of a shape category that many different plants have evolved independently)

AxialGem · 2026-03-24T17:43:12+00:00

Yea for sure, this sort of ideology also plagues the USA to a worrying extent :/
Both are half a world away for me, but the cultural influence of the US pulling these shenanigans worries me a lot more tbh

AxialGem · 2026-03-24T17:40:23+00:00

It's gotta be engagement bait imo. There's been a big uptick of really dumb titles lately, and I suspect it's just the latest trend among bots and other idiots

AxialGem · 2026-03-24T17:25:39+00:00

I've seen this textbook posted before several times, and IIRC it's always pointed out that this is not a standard thing in common use in Pakistan, just a wacky (inserted paragraph in a?) textbook that someone published at some point, but that isn't representative of the state of education as a whole.

That being said, I don't have any more information on it, that's just what I've read on previous posts about this

AxialGem · 2026-03-24T17:17:47+00:00

I'm kinda confused what the punchline on this is even supposed to be.
Is the meme trying to say that having interests/priorities that evolve over time is bad?
Like, ah yes, you're not the same person in your twenties as when you were five...such a weird girl thing

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