When we ask people, what's the most indestructible and more to have ever lived on earth we were hit with a barrage of different suggestions

Everything from dinosaurs and reptiles to invertebrates and fish were thrown into the ring

But what's the actual answer?

well

If you google most indestructible animal this little critter pops up with headlines claiming that they can survive incredible

Levels of radiation live at the bottom of the ocean or in the vacuum of space

Now I don't want to say Google is wrong, but it's definitely not right either

So what is the most indestructible animal to have ever lived on earth?

Let sun pick this tangled web of Earth's greatest survivors

I'm sure this is the bunt and we're here to saw the truths from the myths and the facts from the misconceptions

With so many pretenders for the crown of most indestructible animal. Let's start with some of the oldest candidates

I'm talking seriously old

prehistoric in fact going all the way back to the Cretaceous period

You might expect fan favorite dinosaurs like the t-rex to be pretty Hardy

Instead it turns out that the most indestructible

Dinosaurs weren't the ones trying to kill each other, but rather those critters who just wanted to eat their greens in peace

One such species of dinosaur was the angular saw which might easily be mistaken for a tank

The uo+ if Alice is probably the best example of this genus

Covered with thick spines across its back and sides of its head

for protection even its eyelids were armored its skull was so thick that an attack from a raptor like a

Deinonychus would leave barely a scratch and it could withstand a bite from a Tyrannosaurus Rex

While some though no experts even believed that their armor could stop small gunfire

and fossils show that if one of these badasses swung

Well their ass then its club-like tail could break the legs of a t-rex

now obviously

Ankylosaurs aren't invincible

Otherwise, they'd still be roaming around today. In fact even back when they were around

They occasionally ran into difficulty. You see they had one fundamental weakness

If something managed to flip it over onto its back

Its soft Armour free belly would be exposed and that often meant getting over for an angular sore

but according to paleontologist Kenneth carpenter

This wouldn't have been easy for a predator to achieve

It would be difficult even without the armor to get a purchase on it because his body is relatively flat

Combine this with their incredible defenses and most predators just left them alone in favor of easier prey

Console and blame them you think a tank wouldn't be easy

But I'm afraid it doesn't matter if the gyro place if Alice was the most indestructible dinosaur because around 66 million years ago

it's fair to say there was a little incident and

by little incident

I am of course referring to that time a huge meteorite slammed into Earth causing the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and 75%

of all of the species that

Still leaves an awful lot of survivors though. So surely some of them must have a claim to the title of most indestructible animal

How about the humble crocodile other than size this modern-day living fossil hasn't really evolved in around

200 million years fitting the definition of if it ain't broke. Don't fix it

So how did it survive a near apocalypse?

Well to start with the KT extinction as it's known wasn't an overnight event

It took place over a few hundred to a few thousand years

So while Crocs have an impressive armored skin similar to the late ankylosaurs?

It was in defense mechanisms like this that were key to its

Survival the species that survived were those that were best adapted to the aftermath and not necessarily the initial event

Blaster crocodile with an asteroid and you'll end up with a dead crocodile what worked in their favor however was their habitat?

While this extinction event wiped out land dwelling dinosaurs pterosaurs and the majority of marine reptiles crocs got off

relatively lightly

Living between land and freshwater lakes or saltwater

estuaries allowed them to avoid the worst hit environments on land and in saltwater oceans crocs are also

Cold-blooded allowing them to slow their metabolism and survive when food was in short supply

Which it most definitely was in the post-apocalyptic world following the KT extinction plus most

paleontologists now consider dinosaurs to be at the warm-blooded end of the spectrum and when food became scarce

So did they while we're right to be impressed with how crocodiles survived when lots of other creatures died out?

They weren't exactly the only species to make it through those dark times

There were plenty of other species that had the ability to endure those trying conditions

I mean we wouldn't be here today without the survival of our early primate relatives

In fact a whole host of animals, you know today have barely evolved since he lived alongside the dinosaurs

There's the duckbill platypus sharks and green sea turtles

But one little critter has been around long before all of these aquatic greats

crawling along the present-day seafloor

You'll find the horseshoe crab this humble animal might not look like much but they have withstood

Three of the planet's mass extinctions and date back

450 million years

Having lived through some of the most dramatic

Environmental changes earth has ever seen they're an incredibly adaptable species

They can feed on nearly any organic matter have an armored shell that can heal over pretty much any wound and they can survive

with very low oxygen levels

There's just one problem us

despite surviving nearly half a billion years in

2016 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature put these guys on the vulnerable list

aside from habitat loss

These creatures are harvested by the pharmaceutical industry for their bacteria indicating blood

the net result has been a steady decline of their relation as

Unfortunate as that is we can't exactly have the most indestructible animal sitting on a vulnerable list

With humans now being the biggest threat to these epic survivors. Let's bring in another man-made destructive force

nuclear bombs

Surely anything that can get through a nuclear blast must have a shot at the title of most indestructible animal

Now I'd imagine the creature that springs to mind is the formidable little cockroach the idea that they can handle a nuclear explosion

has been around since reports circulated that these mini beasts were the only survivors found in the rubble following their Oshima and

Nagasaki atomic bombs

But the fact is cockroaches can't withstand the intense energy released by a nuclear explosion

Their presence after the atomic bombs was due to their ability to withstand

Extreme levels of radiation as a point of reference the aforementioned atomic bombs released radiation levels of around 100 Gray's each

roaches can withstand up to

1,000 Gray's why are these little guys so resilient to radiation?

Well, it's all down to their bodies simple design and slow cell cycle

You see cells are particularly susceptible to radiation

And they're dividing and renewing the human cell cycle is fairly constant and takes place every 24 hours

Cockroach is comparatively change once a week and it takes 48 hours

So their window of vulnerability is much narrower

These guys won't be walking away from the hypocenter of a nuclear bomb and to be honest

No animal can but they can hold their own host of nuke

they've also got a pretty good track record of survival having evolved around 200 million years ago living alongside the crocodile and

surviving the KT extinction

So far, I think we've been too easy on the animal kingdom. We need to up the stakes

Really ramp up the level of destruction what could possibly survive a huge asteroid hitting the planet?

Billions of tons of rock into the air while simultaneously a series of the biggest volcanic eruptions take place

Filling the atmosphere with ash blocking the Sun

Actually, that's not enough

Let's detonate a whole bunch of nuclear bombs for good measure now we should have the biggest mass extinction ever to occur on a planet

What animal could get through that?

Well somewhere amongst the rubble and fallout of our once thriving planet

You'll find those little fellas we mentioned at the start a creature known as a tardigrade

affectionately referred to as water bears or moss piglets

These guys have been on earth for around 520 million years

It can be found in pretty much every environment imaginable

They can survive in the vacuum of space

Withstand the pressures of the deepest oceans go without food or water for 30 to 40 years be frozen at minus

328 degrees Fahrenheit or be heated to more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit

They can even cope with radiation levels up to

6,000 grays a human for comparison would be lucky to walk away from the five grays

There's one rather large problem

However with how we perceive tardigrades these little guys can't survive all these extreme environments

whilst going about their daily business

Take this little tardigrade

for example

It would have died during the apocalypse you see tardigrades as they exist from day to day aren't very

Indestructible at all. In fact, you could kill them pretty easily if you catch them unprepared

To become indestructible these micro animals put themselves into a protective state of cryptobiosis

where they tuck their data legs in and excrete

97% the moisture from their body like this they become what's known as a ton

They produce a form of antifreeze called glycerol and convert jelly-like

proteins into glassy cocoons there protect all parts of the tardigrade that are sensitive to

dehydration as a tan, the tardigrade reduces its metabolism by

99.99% and then simply waits for a more habitable environment to become available

However, here comes the biggest misconception about these cuddly little pig-faced creatures

They can't all survive old extreme environments

individually and they can live in the most extreme habitats with species like the thermos odium Misaki found living in acidic hot springs and

Other marine tardigrades able to endure life in the crushing depths of the ocean trenches

however

There's no evidence that these marine tardigrades have the ability to transform into a ton indeed

These tardigrades will actually die in freshwater whilst other terrestrial or freshwater species die in high concentrated

Saltwater and in fact the species I mentioned in the acidic Hot Springs is now thought to be extinct after an earthquake

It's also noted that during experiments only some tardigrades survived being boiled frozen and subjected to radiation

Not to be too hard on these guys

But their transformation into an indestructible tun can take several minutes to a couple of hours

So it's not exactly an instantaneous defense mechanism

Plus the tardigrades that famously survived their trip into space were already in the tonnes state

So why are these guys popularized as the toughest most indestructible?

animal well

You see the headlines that gave them their incredible status were based on a study by

Theoretical physicists who lumped all the tardigrades and their abilities together what in fact there are around

1250 species William R Miller an expert on tardigrades explains the merging of the species together

Simply doesn't work

It's like saying a sixgill shark at the bottom of the ocean is the same as the snow leopard in Siberia

When approaching it from a biological point of view

Lumping them all in as one it's just unfair when trying to establish the most in destruct

animal and in fact Miller points out how unjust they're popularized indestructible status is

They're quite easily murdered. We kill thousands of them every day

in an apocalyptic sense, however a

2017 study found that in the ultimate life destroying Astrophysical event

The little water bears living at the bottom of the Marianas Trench would endure and that it would take the world's oceans to boil away

Before all these little creatures would be wiped out

Problem is in real-life scenarios

You could quite easily just squish them and ferocious predators like snails

Routinely do as they chomp down on them for a tasty meal

Although they'd still be resilient to getting squashed between your fingers because they're so small

They're probably just hide in the irregularities of your fingerprints right while we can agree that tardigrades are incredibly resilient

They can die

But what about animals that like to laugh in the face of death?

Ones that have been squished and chopped up, but in true Terminator style even generate back to life

Surely that is what indestructible is really about

And incredibly there are a lot of animals out there with regenerative

Powers from salamanders regrowing their tails to sea cucumbers regrowing their organs

Okay, let's start with probably the cutest of the candidates so far

the axolotl

This little fella can regrow one of the most important organs of all not only can they regenerate a missing limb?

Tail or even their lower jaw, but also parts of their brain and heart

If they're paralyzed in the back

They can make all new neurons and new connections that allow them to use their legs again

Which is really one of the most incredible examples of recovery

But as incredible as that is there's still only regenerating parts of the body now

I'm sure I'm not the only one who heard the rumor of school about earthworms

You know the theory if you chop one in two, it will generate into two living earthworms

True the head end may survive and regrow a stunted tail

But once the nerve endings have stopped it wriggling around you'll most likely just end up with two halves

There is however distant relatives known as planarian flatworms and

Scientists are describing these incredible creatures as having regenerative superpowers

Research has looked at a range of these species since 1901

But it's only today that scientists are beginning to understand is true abilities

This creature can regrow its entire head but not only that it retains learned

Information as though it had never been decapitated

and it doesn't stop there this incredible little worm can regenerate from as little as

10,000 cells which is around only one

279th of a planarian flatworms body. How do they do it? Well, it's all down to the fact that their adult stem cells are pluripotent

Meaning they can potentially become any cell in the body with other animals

Once they hit adulthood their stem cells become limited and can only produce cells for specific purposes

blood stem cells produce blood cells for example

But they can't produce skin cells with

Planarians special adult stem cells called mere blasts can produce all the different types of cells that make up a complete

planarian in theory you could chop one worm into

279 pieces and so long as each part contained one of the special near blast cells and you'd have

279 new worms within about two weeks and this process isn't limited to one round of regeneration

These creatures are in way

immortal seems impossible

But in order to heal or regenerate stem cells divide in other animals as this process is repeated

The cells start to decay and show signs of aging when they age

Stem cells can no longer divide and can't replace the exhausted cells in our bodies

However, stem cells Implanon and flat worms don't stop dividing and so avoid the aging process

What does kill these little guys however is?

Radiation but so long as they remained enough healthy cells in the worm

They could recover in fact scientists at MIT

have discovered that by transplanting one neo blast cell called a chrono genic neo blast from a healthy worm to a worm that's received a

Lethal dose of radiation the net one cell will regenerate the entire worm

So with all these incredible candidates with amazing abilities

Which animal comes out on top well to answer this fairly

You need to split them into categories

If nuclear apocalypse or the ultimate planet wide extinction fell upon us then tardigrades would inherit the earth in the more day-to-day

Scenario of forcing off predators than the you Oprah syphilis would live to fight another day

but if a bizarre situation occurred where you were chopped up

Stamped on and smushed then the planarian flatworm would be the only creature

eventually wriggling away to live another day on the

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