This Bestiary is looking at a creature from Star Trek Discovery that I’m sure will prompt
civil and polite discourse in the comments section below, the Giant Tardigrade.
So, tardigrades are real creatures, microscopic in scale and renowned for their incredible
resilience and survivability.
However, these creatures are only around half a millimetre in size, even when fully grown,
whereas the larger Trek one is around 3 metres long.
It has a brownish hide, with a carapace running down its back, two back-swept antennae and
eight stubby legs.
Each limb ended in four very long and sharp claws.
Its head has no traditional eyes, but dislike high intensity light, so clearly have some
photoceptors.
Their mouth is a ring of muscle with stylets or teeth which it could use to pierce things,
or act as a little vacuum nozzle for feeding.
Real Tardigrades do not have lungs, and considering this thing can float in space, its probable
this is the case for the Macro Tardigrade too.
Much of their resilience is due to their protected DNA, as their bodies literally have a protein,
termed “Dsup” or Damage Suppressant which protects them from ionizing radiation.
Additionally, they can eject most of their body water to dehydrate themselves, curl up,
decreasing in size, withdrawing their limbs all in order to enter into a dormant hibernation
state where their metabolism drops to 0.01 percent of its rate, called a “tun” state.
Their outer layer of skin is also very durable, again relative size and all that and is similar
to the materials found in exoskeletons.
Scale this up for the larger tardigrade, and that explains the literal plate-like shell
segments that make up the top of its hide.
This has allowed them to survive all sorts of extreme environments, like space however
I should highlight the word survive, not thrive.
They endure such extremes; they don’t prefer them or anything.
This survivability carries over to the sci-fi one too, but dialled up to even be resistant
to phaser and disruptor fire.
The macro tardigrade can also tear through metal and inner bulkheads of a starship with
east, using its large claws, suggesting that its tough hide can also resist the tears and
prods of sheered metal.
Not to mention the strength required to force through light duranium sheeting.
The musculature of a microscopic tardigrade is all fibres spun through its body like a
web, and as it lacks a skeleton, that mostly what gives it form, which works on such a
small sale.
The Trek version however has a skeletal structure, probably because it’s so much larger and
therefore needs one.
The primary encountered one was in 2256 and named “Ripper” for its tendency to do
just that, and originally it was incredibly violent, and coupled with its complete resistance
to energy weapons, it was able to close in and savage people several times.
However, this behaviour was not malevolent in motivation, but merely out of fear.
It’s level of intelligence seems animalistic, only displaying instinctual behaviour, but
analysis of its nervous system and brain may indicate some level of sentience.
It also has the ability to commune across layers of subspace, and possibly dimensions
thanks to the strange makeup of its mind.
Aside from sharing many traits with its real-world counterpart, the tardigrade of Star Trek has
many other abilities, centred around its symbiotic relationship with the Mycelial Network located
in a deep subspace layer.
The tardigrade somehow uses horizontal gene transfer (something I don’t think occurs
in real ones), to absorb genetic material from the Prototaxities Stellaviatori fungus
that makes up the majority of the network.
This connection, established from its grazing habits on said mushrooms, allowed it to tap
into the same properties that the spores of the fungus possessed.
In short, just as the spores of the network were able to drift between this subspace layer
and normal spacetime, the Tardigrade, when amply supplied, could teleport itself into
the subspace domain and back out.
From here, it could navigate through the network and emerge at another point in the same fashion
as the spores, or even the spore drive.
It was the ability to navigate the network that the USS Glenn attempted to utilise, followed
by the Discovery when it came to finding a way to successfully plot a course through
the network.
Such methodology involved abusing the creature to a state of exhaustion, however and was
one of several reasons the Spore Drive was dropped.
But enough about that grim premise.
It has been seen to flourish in several natural environments, both within the subspace mycelial
plane and wherever in regular space that there is a high concentration of the spores on which
it feeds.
As the creature itself can simply jump between the realms, it is capable of theoretically
appearing anywhere and vanishing again, making encountering them outside of the network,
a rarity.
Especially as their high durability and extremophile nature means that they can quite contently
drift in the vacuum of space for a time.
However, as one was found aboard the USS Glenn, near its spore reserves, then it is likely
that it has a method of locating them.
Or it was beamed aboard along with spore samples, considering its strange DNA structure.
These spores were not its only source of food however, as it was capable of eating many
types of the network’s flora, including Yeal Tree poison, which it seemed to be immune
to.
This mean that the naturally toxic plant was kept in check within the network, by the Tardigrade’s
continual feeding.
They were also probably omnivores, likely capable of digesting meat too.
So, you really don’t want to annoy one.
They lay clutches of eggs and if they are anything like real Tardigrade eggs, then they
can last for a long time in a similar state of hibernation as to the parent, only hatching
after an extended gestation.
Recently, there are reports of experimentation that actually quantum entangled a tardigrade,
the first living creature to be rendered into such a state, however this is still under
scrutiny, so it’s uncertain, but hey, maybe quantum tunnelling tardigrades are next up.
If we develop realm shifting tardigrades before warp drive, I’m gonna be mad.
So that is about it for the Tardigrade.
The anatomy the real-life little water bears is amazing, and they are fascinating creatures
in general, but like the Macrovirus, most of that uniqueness cannot simply be scaled
up and still work.
Nevertheless, they are fascinating and that about concludes this video.
Thanks again for watching this bestiary and until the next one, I’ve been Ric, Goodbye!