--- title: The microscopic world: tardigrades, mites, plankton and other tiny creatures — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The microscopic world: tardigrades, mites, plankton and other tiny creatures», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Scoop a clump of wet moss from a wall, squeeze a drop onto a slide, and you may meet a tardig --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The microscopic world: tardigrades, mi… # The microscopic world: tardigrades, mites, plankton and other tiny creatures Lesson 259 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/0/) — Scoop a clump of wet moss from a wall, squeeze a drop onto a slide, and you may meet a tardigrade, or water bear: a plump little animal less than a millimetre long, lumbering about on eight stubby legs. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/1/) — When its moss dries out, a tardigrade curls into a dry little barrel called a «tun» and almost stops living; add water, even years later, and it can wake up and walk off again. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/2/) — Tiny creatures are all around us: dust mites in our beds, eyelash mites at the roots of our lashes, water fleas in ponds, and in the sea, drifting plankton that feed fish and even the giant blue whale. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/3/) — Cartoons sometimes show plankton as one small green character with one eye, but real plankton are millions of different drifting living things, from glassy algae to baby crabs and fish eggs. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/4/) — Most life on Earth is too small to see with our eyes, and scientists still discover thousands of new microscopic kinds every year. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/5/) — Tardigrades, or water bears, are tiny eight-legged animals less than a millimetre long that often live in moss; they were first described by Johann Goeze in 1773, who called them little water bears. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/6/) — A dried tardigrade curls into a «tun» and nearly stops all life processes, and in 2007 dried tardigrades survived 10 days in open space on a satellite. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/7/) — Dried tardigrades survive great cold, high pressure and radiation, but they are not immortal, and active tardigrades are quite fragile. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/8/) — Dust mites are tiny relatives of spiders, with eight legs, that live in beds and carpets and eat flakes of dead skin; their droppings can cause allergies and asthma, and washing bedding hot and airing it keeps them down. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/9/) — Most adults have tiny Demodex mites living in the roots of their eyelashes and in face pores, eating skin oils, usually without any harm; it was long said they have no bottom, but a 2022 study found they do. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/10/) — Plankton are tiny living things drifting in the sea, including algae, baby crabs, fish eggs and krill, and they are the base of the sea's food web. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/11/) — The blue whale, the biggest animal ever, eats tiny krill, up to several tonnes a day. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/12/) — Water fleas are tiny see-through crustaceans that jump through water with their antennae, and under a microscope you can watch their hearts beating. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/13/) — Rotifers are tiny animals with a crown of beating hairs that looks like spinning wheels, and some were reported to revive after about 24,000 years frozen in Siberian ice, because frozen they stop nearly all life processes, like a dried tardigrade. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/14/) — Diatoms are single-celled algae with glass shells in beautiful patterns, and they make a big share of the oxygen we breathe. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/15/) — The smallest insects are fairy wasps, sometimes called fairy flies; some are only about a seventh of a millimetre long, smaller than some single-celled creatures. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/16/) — «Sea monkeys» are brine shrimps whose dried eggs can wait for years and hatch in salt water, so when their salty lake dries up, the eggs wait until the water comes back; in the wild they live in very salty lakes where fish cannot live. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/17/) — A slime mould is a giant single cell with many nuclei; it can find the shortest way through a maze to food, and in a Japanese test it grew paths very like the Tokyo railway map. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/18/) — One drop of seawater can hold millions of viruses and bacteria and many plankton. - ← previous: [The microscopic world: viruses and vaccines](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/258-the-microscopic-world-viruses-and-vaccines/) - next →: [The human body deeper: the brain and nerves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/260-human-body-deeper-the-brain-and-nerves/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)