Water Bear

An old coworker of mine just turned me on to this fascinating little creature known as a Tardigrade. She describes it better than me:

The coolest thing I saw in the sludge is called a water bear. It basically looks like an eight-legged hippo. It moves around pretty slowly and feeds on the sludge. They told me it is not affected by radiation or cold etc. and the species will probably outlive us all.

I’m keen on anything related to bears because my name is the Norsk word for bear. Further digging around on Wikipedia turned up this gem:

One has been given its own genus and family, Beorn leggi (the genus named by Cooper after the character Beorn from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and the species named after his student William M. Legg)