The picture, credited to Nicole Ottawa and Oliver Meckes, is one of the weirdest coolest things I've ever seen- especially since it's actually a real picture from nature from an electron micrograph. The milimeter-long creature is an adorable moss piglet- aka the tardigrade. Officially, this polyextremophile is a new favorite animal of mine, and it's also a subject of close study. Since it can survive such incredible pressures, it was the first animal to be sent into space, and it survived hard vacuum. It was tested in 2011, actually outside the space shuttle. Tardigrades are extremely hardy, being able to go for decades without food and water, survive far above the boiling point or near absolute zero, and survive under direct exposure to dangerous radiation. This is partly because they can repair their DNA and reduce body water content to a few percent. Tardigrades were also launched to the Martian moon Phobos on Russian mission Fobos-Grunt, but the rocket failed and they only stayed in Earth orbit.
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