
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Radio : Friday 10 am PST 1 pm EST on KQED scienceink update : The New York Times does a slide show , and New Scientist approves The Toughest Bear in the Universe scienceink Spencer Debenport , a plant pathologist at Ohio State University , sports a tattoo of a tardigrade , a microscopic animal known as the water bear . I have always loved microscopic critters , and there is none other as intriguing as the tardigrade , 8221 he writes . The fact that they are so hardy , yet still that odd mixture of ugly cute drew me to them and the more I read up on them , the more I wanted one