Wild creatures with spoon limbs (Genus Ramazzottius) Possibly you did already come across the tardigrade Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri with its tiger pattern under your microscope. It is quite abundant and can be recognized easily. Some years ago we have presented a beautiful color portrait here in the Water Bear web base. In real life, simply photographed it looks as shown just below: |
Water bear Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri (previous name: Hypsibius oberhaeuseri), female. Some ovary cells and their nuclei are perceivable. Typical body length ca. 300 µm. |
Even at moderate magnification we can distinguish the
red-brown bands and the unymmetrical claws, each of them with a long
straight branch. |
Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri, anterior part of the body.
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Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri has some exotic relatives which look a little bit more wild; in fact their temperament causes some problems in photography. Nevertheless our CCD has caught a fraction of their character. |
A Ramazzottius sp. tardigrade.
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Tardigrade Ramazzottius sp.
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The same species in bright field illumnation. Note the extremely long legs and claws. |
The Ramazzottius tardigrades have extra-long claws that can be bent only in one direction. It looks a little bit like the finger movement of a smoker who is disposing his ash (though, of course, we do have only strict non-smokers under water). |
"Ramazzottius"-claws
at a tardigrade leg, in this case photographed on an old cuticula after moulting.
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Just compare the situation at a) with an ordinary spoon. You will note that it can bend only in one direction. |
Soft plastic spoon, before experiment. |
Soft plastic spoon, bent a little bit into the only possible direction. |
Soft plastic spoon, bent stronger into the only possible direction. Bending into the opposite direction is virtually impossible. Just give it a try but play safe and use your own private spoon ... |
Of course one might discuss the pros and cons of this spoon limb.
Possibly it is just some kind of semi-automatic moss grip making optimum
contact with the moss substrate one one hand but not impeding smooth
movement in a moss jungle on the other. But this text might help a little bit:
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© Text, images and video clips by
Martin Mach (webmaster@baertierchen.de).
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