Extreme survivors

Animals that persist through conditions lethal to almost everything else.

• Water BearMilnesium tardigradum
• Artemia salina
• Sleeping ChironomidPolypedilum vanderplanki
• Caenorhabditis elegans
• Giant Tube WormRiftia pachyptila
• Pompeii WormAlvinella pompejana

About this list

Most of the entries here survive by leaving the fight rather than winning it: they suspend metabolism entirely, dry to a glassy state, and wait. A hydrated tardigrade is a fragile animal — it is the desiccated tun that shrugs off vacuum and radiation.

The vent species are the exception. Alvinella and Riftia live at hydrothermal vents in permanent darkness, at pressures and temperature gradients that would be fatal metres away, and do it while fully active.