When Angie Treinen first learned about tardigrades a few years ago, at a family-friendly science event at the University of Wisconsin, she couldn’t believe it. She loved their squashed little faces and their wonderfully rotund bodies, which look like a puffy stack of partly melted marshmallows. “I just stood there the whole time like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Treinen says. Treinen studied zoology and worked as a veterinarian, but had never encountered teeny tiny tardigrades, which are variously known as moss piglets and water bears. Immediately, they captivated her. Typically…
