• Question: Is there an animal that can survive off of earth?

    Asked by anon-245856 to Sam, Samantha, Nicol, Lori-Ann, Liam, David on 16 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Samantha Faircloth

      Samantha Faircloth answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Hello babychungus (great name!), there are no animals that we have currently Earth that could survive off the Earth. They are creatures called extremophiles that are able to cope with really hot or really cold temperatures that just might be able to exist on other planets but we don’t have any evidence of them living there yet! 🙂

    • Photo: Lori-Ann Foley

      Lori-Ann Foley answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Although nothing has been sent off Earth and left there on purpose, we know that when one of the lunar probes crashed on the moon last year it had some tradigrades on it. But we don’t know what happened to them. They are tiny and are called water bears, because they kind of look like bears, and they are believed to be very hardy, so who knows! You can find out about them here: https://www.britannica.com/animal/tardigrade

    • Photo: David Sobral

      David Sobral answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Humans! In the international space station or space-ships 🙂

    • Photo: Nicol Caplin

      Nicol Caplin answered on 19 Mar 2020:

      There are animals that have been sent to space in the past, but they have been able to survive inside spacecraft where there are all of the same things they would need to survive on Earth such as oxygen to breathe and food to eat. The main difference is the lack of gravity! This makes an interesting thing to study.

      Outside of spacecraft the environment is dramatically different! There is no breathable air and open space is a vacuum with very high levels of radiation so a huge challenge to visit. That is why any humans that go on spacewalks have to wear spacesuits with thick shielding and an air supply. There is one tiny animal however that has been known to survive outside of spacecraft:

      in 2007 the European Space Agency sent a batch of microscopic animals called tardigrades (or water bears) up to the outside of the International Space Station. You may have heard of them before- they exist everywhere on planet Earth! It was found that these tiny creatures could survive space, but not for that long due to high radiation levels. Studying these creatures gives us information about the mechanisms that help them survive space much more than humans!

      Did you know you can collect tardigrades from parks and gardens? They are nice to look at under the microscope.

Comments