WATER BEARS IN SPACE

An in-depth introduction to the world’s cutest microanimal, with notes on its astonishing ability to weather extreme conditions, including heat, cold, and drought.

Goldsmith offers the intriguing information that tardigrades have been around for roughly 600 million years and have survived all the mass extinction events in our planet’s history. She describes multiple experiments demonstrating that the creatures tolerate treatment that would kill most any other life form—including being exposed to the vacuum of outer space—and exciting hints of how those capabilities might be adapted for human needs, for example in repairing damaged DNA. The fact that they tolerate 1,000 times more radiation than we can promises discoveries that might help with cancer treatments and also leads to a discussion of the controversial theory of panspermia, which posits that life on Earth—perhaps in the form of tardigrades—originated from outer space. Though we get little internal anatomical detail about these weird and engaging animals, readers will come away gobsmacked by their unique qualities and perhaps eager to rush out to harvest a few specimens of their own from the nearest patch of damp moss or lichen. The small stock photos are mostly filler, but there are close-up images of water bears. The humans who appear are light-skinned and predominantly male-presenting.

An appealing overview that is likely to spark curiosity.