Last Chance! Tardigrades at the Museum

The exhibition, Life at the Limits, closes after Sunday, January 3. Make sure to stop in to learn about how living things have evolved from simple cells into an awe-inspiring array of life forms. 

One especially interesting creature is the tardigrade. Tardigrades—microscopic eight-legged animals that resemble plump piglets in puffer coats—have been charming and astonishing biologists since they were first discovered in the 1770s. Now they’re starring, as 10-foot models, no less, in the Museum’s new exhibition Life at the Limits.

Tardigrades are phenomenally successful organisms, having first appeared more than 600 million years ago. More than 1,000 species can be found all over the world, in sea and fresh water, as well as on land, where they cling to moist moss or lichens. Though they’re common in moderate climes, terrestrial tardigrades are also one of the few animals that thrive in spots that are particularly inhospitable to life, such as Antarctica’s McMurdo Valleys, thought to be the driest and coldest desert on Earth.

Learn more about the tenacious tardigrade. 

Experts once considered cave dwellers to be evolutionary dead ends. Charles Darwin himself wrote of these “wrecks of ancient life,” and “living fossils.” But now we know better. As scientists find new cave species and probe their DNA, we’re learning that this hidden world is as dynamic as the one above ground. Far from being dead zones, caves are evolutionary laboratories.

The cave spider (Trogloraptor marchingtoni), first discovered in the dark zone of a cave in the coastal forests of Oregon, differs from other spiders so much that scientists created a new family to classify it. One feature that sets it apart: unmatched toothed claws at the end of each leg that are likely used for capturing prey.

Meet more amazing creatures in Life at the Limits, open for one more month!

Owls have extremely sharp hearing. By listening for faint rustling sounds, they can track down a mouse on a moonless night, nibbling seeds or tunneling under snow. An owl’s saucer-shaped face funnels sound toward its ears, hidden below the feathers on the sides of its head.

This is the skull of the boreal owl, a creature that hunts by hearing. Like many owl species, this small nocturnal owl has asymmetrical ear openings, visible on each side of the skull: the right ear is much higher than the left. A sound coming from the ground will arrive at each ear at a slightly different time and intensity. By comparing the sound in each ear, owls can pinpoint the location of small rodents such as voles, even when it’s too dark to see.

Meet more amazing creatures in Life at the Limits: Stories of Amazing Species, a temporary exhibition, now open at the Museum.