The earth is a beautiful and abundant life planet. Since 3.8 billion years ago, the early primitive life was born to the present, it is unknown how many kinds of life have been born on the earth. These beings have undergone continuous evolution and evolution, and then there is a world of life rich in species.
The evolutionary path of life is actually a process of constantly adapting to the environment. With the progress of evolution, life forms become more and more complex, and their resistance to the environment is constantly strengthened. In a word, the evolutionary path of life is actually the path of growth, which is constantly advancing to a higher level of life.
The earth in ancient times also had a variety of powerful beings, but the ability of these life theories to adapt to the environment, the tenacious ability of life forms is far from being compared with the current life. Some people might say that the dinosaurs 65 million years ago were huge creatures whose power surpassed all life now.
That’s right, in terms of power, dinosaurs are indeed hegemonic creatures, and it can be said that they are the largest creatures that have appeared since the birth of life on the earth. Their power is very powerful, no life can defeat dinosaurs in strength, but in terms of environmental adaptability, dinosaurs are far inferior to most modern creatures.
The impact of an asteroid 65 million years ago caused a huge ecological change on the earth. In such a huge ecological change, all the dinosaurs all over the world were extinct. This is an incredible thing. If the dinosaurs are only distributed in a very limited area, then it is normal for an asteroid to strike to exterminate the dinosaurs.
However, dinosaurs from 65 million years ago are spread all over the earth and are widely distributed. The ecological changes caused by asteroid impacts make it impossible for the global dinosaurs to become extinct under normal circumstances. But the real result is that the dinosaurs are extinct. The main reason is that although the dinosaurs are very powerful, their ability to adapt to the environment is very weak. As long as some major changes occur in the ecological gadgets, the dinosaurs cannot adapt and can only become extinct. .
After the extinction of the dinosaurs, the surviving life continued to evolve, and after evolution 65 million years ago, there was the current biological world. Therefore, in terms of adapting to the environment, life now far surpasses all kinds of creatures in ancient times. So what is the most tenacious life on earth today? Some people may say that human beings are the overlord of the earth and the advanced beings at the top of the food chain. So should human beings be the most tenacious life on earth?
If you think so, you are wrong. Although human beings are advanced intelligent beings, our physical fitness is far inferior to many creatures in nature. So who is the most tenacious life among all living things on earth? Many people may not have heard of the name of this creature. It has a very strange name: water bear insect.
Water bear, or water bear insect, is a common name for tardigrade creatures. Since there is a bear in its name, is it a powerful creature like a bear? If you think so, you are wrong. In fact, although the water bear has a more domineering name, its appearance is not domineering at all, and it is still a very small creature.
How small is it? Most of them are between 50 microns and 1.4 mm, and even larger ones will not exceed 2 mm. It is precisely because water bears are so small that we need to use magnifying tools to see them clearly. Water bear insects do not look like bears or insects in appearance. It can be said to be a “four-unlike”. They have four body segments on their heads, four pairs of feet on their bodies, and claws and accretion disks at the ends of their limbs. On the whole, it looks a bit hideous and a bit weird.
Although the water bear is very small, don’t underestimate it. If you list the tenaciousness of life on earth, then the water bear is definitely the number one deserved. It can survive in a variety of harsh environments. The tenacious survival ability of this creature is beyond our imagination. Scientists have conducted various survival experiments on it. For example, in an extremely arid environment, they can survive for thousands of years.
It can survive for 2 minutes at both -272°C and 151°C, a few days at low temperature -200°C, and at least 30 years at -20°C. The dose of ionizing radiation it can withstand is hundreds of times the lethal dose of human beings. The pressure that can withstand is about 6 times that of the current deepest trench, and people may be deformed under the same pressure.
What’s even more incredible is that water bear worms can survive for a period of time in a vacuum and high radiation environment like space. A space experiment in 2007 showed that it can survive 10 days when exposed to vacuum and radiation. In 2017, some scientists even issued a document saying that they believed that they were enough to survive asteroid impacts, supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts and other devastating disasters. It can be said that the sun will not explode, and they will not hang.
It is precisely because of the tenacious vitality of water bear insects that their footprints can be said to be all over the corners of the earth. We can see them no matter whether it is in the mountains or in the sea of fire, or on the bottom of more than 4000 meters, the interior of the earth, etc. Figure. For water bears, known as “the strongest creatures on the earth,” most of the environment cannot kill them. Many people are very worried about whether they will flood or even occupy the earth in the future?
Such worries seem a bit absurd, but it is not impossible to think about it carefully. If the earth will usher in a mass extinction event again in the future, when other creatures on the earth including humans are extinct, the most likely thing to survive is water. Bear worm. Once there is no overlord like humans, it is not impossible for the water bear to become the new overlord of the earth through continuous evolution.
Moreover, scientists have discovered through research and exploration that water bear worms have been on the earth for at least 500 million years, that is, they appeared on the earth 500 million years ago. In the 500 million years of life of the earth, there have been many mass extinction events. Various other creatures have disappeared in the extinction time after time, but the water bear insects have not been affected much.
If we say who is the longest living creature in the history of life on earth, it is the water bear. There are millions of different kinds of creatures on the earth now, and I am afraid there is no such thing as the existence of water bear insects. However, judging from the continuous continuation of water bear insects for more than 500 million years, they do not seem to have the desire to dominate the earth, but simply want to live stubbornly.
Of course, if one day in the future, water bear worms really threaten the survival of mankind, there may be another way to eliminate them, and that is to give play to the nature of human food. You must know that the most powerful ability of human beings is to eat. No matter how tenacious and terrifying this kind of creature is on the earth, facing the human beings’ ability to eat food, they must be willing to go downhill.
Of course, the above is just a joke for us. It is estimated that we can’t eat water bears, and they are too small. For humans, the existence of the water bear is very significant. Since it can have such a strong survival ability, it means that there must be a secret in the gene sequence of the water bear.
As long as we continue to crack the genetic mystery of the water bear through genetic technology, we may be able to find the genetic secret that the water bear can adapt to various harsh environments. At that time, we may be able to implant this gene into the human body, so that the human body also has tenacious vitality and can survive in various harsh environments.
We must know that in the future, human beings will inevitably go to the starry sky, and on the way to explore the universe, we need to survive in space for a long time. With the current physical fitness of human beings, it is difficult to adapt to the harsh space environment. More importantly, we will colonize other planets in the future, and even if different planets are habitable planets, it is unlikely that they will achieve the same ecological environment as the earth.
Without a strong body’s ability to adapt, humans may not be able to adapt as long as the environment of this planet is a little different from that of the earth. Therefore, from the perspective of the future of human civilization, we should crack the secrets of water bear insects. Perhaps in the near future, scientists can learn from water bear insects to develop powerful genetic medicines, so that everyone can become Superman, thus going to the starry sky to explore the universe.