Kennedy writes:

Hi Dr. Water Bear!

Our puppet company, PuppeTyranny, is about to produce a full length play called “Water Bears in Space” all about…you guessed it, tardigrades and tardigradologists! I was hoping you could assure me that we are pronouncing all our water bear words correctly! We’ve been saying::

Milnesium Tardigradum – mil-NESS-ee-um tar-dih-GRAD-um
Tardigradologist – tar-dih-GRADE-all-o-gist
Buccal – buckle

Thanks so much! For more information on the show, check out http://www.waterbearsinspace.weebly.com

Answer from Dr. Miller:
Yes you seem to have your words down correctly.

For buccal you should say “b you ckle” not “buckle”.

Question from Chuck & Ginny:

Could you please explain cryptobiosis?
Also, compared to a copepod, how big are Water Bears?

Answer from Dr. Water Bear:
Cryptobiosis is the process in which water bears can survive pretty much anything.
They basically expel all the water from their bodies and tuck in all their appendages.
Then their metabolism goes down to practically nothing. They can survive like this from 5 – 125 years without dying. So they can essentially die and come back to life.
Tardigradologists are still trying to figure out the exact process that their body under goes to do this.

The biggest water bear is 1 millimeter long. So copepods are larger in most cases. Also water bears are usually about 50 microns.

Dear Dr. Water Bear answers your questions about Water Bears (Tardigrades). Send your questions to:
dr.water.bear@treefoundation.org

Questions and answers will be posted to the Dear Dr. Water Bear category of the TREE Foundation blog.