I stumbled across something that must be the weirdest animal ever: the tardigrade. If you never heard of it before, you're probably in good company...

These critters have been around since, like, forever. They are water animals, they can live about everywhere and survive extreme heat and extreme cold; they are tiny (usually half a millimetre long), and they look really weird. Really, really weird - and at the same time somehow cuddly (no wonder that they are also called "water bears").

Aliens. Well, almost.