Tardigrades don’t need any help in the weird department - the tiny creatures, also known as water bears, are only a few hundred micrometres long, but are almost impossible to kill. They can survive in the vacuum of space, endure total desiccation, and can even bounce back from being frozen for decades at a time.
Now we finally have footage of the strange creatures having sex, and researchers have shown it’s even more complicated than expected (see below).
When it comes to mating, researchers knew that the some water bear species were bisexual (something that’s not that uncommon in the animal world), and it was suspected that fertilisation happened outside the body.
But, on the whole, their sex lives have remained pretty mysterious.
Now a team of researchers from the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz, Germany, have finally filmed the process, which you can see in part below, providing new insight into how the creatures reproduce.
