Lifeboat Foundation

You can freeze them, burn them, dry them out or even blast them into space, but humble tardigrades can survive it all.

As a demonstration of tardigrade power, a new experiment has shown that even locking the critters in a block of ice for three decades fails to deliver the ultimate knockout.

Japanese researchers successfully brought two tardigrades — often called “water bears” for their claws and head shape — back to life after being frozen for 30 years. A separate team of Japanese researchers with the 24th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition discovered the eight-legged, microscopic pair of animals back in 1983 in a frozen sample of moss, which was kept below freezing to the present day.