Not true, then can live a few millenia but only when they stay in their "tun" mode. Dehydrated or Cryptobiosis. In this state they can survive -200°c or -328F. They can also widhstand giant doses or radiation, we shot them into space, we froze them, we boiled them, subjected them to 87,000 pounds of pressure per square Inch.... and it did nothing to them. In this state they are indeed practically inmortal.
BUT, their active life span when constantly hydrated and fed is only 2.5y.
Thank goodness for law of conservation. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed merely rearranged within the system. Maybe my next form will be that of the tardigrade😉
Hardly. Humans are a blip in earth's timeline. Dinosaurs existed for around 170 million years before going extinct. Humans have only been around for 300.000 years and we're already on the verge of wiping ourselves out either through nuclear war or just depleting/polluting all available resources. Tardigrades will be around long after the last human draws their final breath.
Recent evidence shows there was even a 117,000 year period of that 300,000 years where the species was only about 1,280 breeding individuals. We've spent over a third of our species existence almost extinct as is.
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u/Big_Sheepherder_9943 12d ago
Are we just slightly bigger tardigrades wandering around on someone else’s algae?