Ariel Waldman

So if you flash freeze a tardigrade, it's not going to survive.

They need to get a heads up that things are not right.

The second thing is that, you know, they go into these suspended animations and I have got some in my freezer and I defrost them.

Sometimes that have come from Antarctica, but, you know, maybe 50% come back to life.

So they 100% can survive as a species through going through this, but it's not 100% survival rate.

Some might die through that experience and others might pop back to life.

But if your techniques were not as consistent or maybe they were on an icier part of your sample versus more soil, that might affect their survival rate.

So, I mean, this is the fun of science, right?

Is trying to figure out like, okay, what is causing this to happen?

But the reality is, yeah, it's not 100% survival rate.

So you're not going to...

definitively have a tardigrade go into suspended animation and have them come back to life.

You'll get a significant portion of them coming back to life, which is really impressive on its own.

Yeah, no, great question.

So all of your external gear, so you've got your snow pants, you've got your red parka, you've got your big boots, bunny boots.

All of that comes from essentially a quartermaster in New Zealand when you're going to McMurdo Station.

So there's the Antarctic... It's called the CDC and does not stand for... It's Clothing Distribution Center.

You show up in New Zealand.

They've got all your sizes.

You get everything external.