Water Bears at 400x, Part 2
Reconstructed for the archive — this video never had a written companion, so I wrote one from the original footage with my own custom AI tools and a little good old-fashioned tweaking for accuracy.
This one’s another round with the same water bear from the last video — we ended up naming him Red — and at 400x you get enough detail to actually watch him move rather than just confirm he exists.
At 400x it’s hard not to wonder how something this small makes a living. Most tardigrades graze on the insides of moss and lichen cells, piercing them with a needle-like mouthpart and drawing out the contents — and a few go further and hunt other tardigrades, which is not quite the cuddly reputation the nickname implies.
This is part of our Water Bears at 400x series.
I'm Joseph Dattilo — engineer-founder in Lansing, Michigan, author of the FleetHarbor suite, and founder of Date Palm Media. More about me · More writing · Get in touch