[im3w1l]

What confuses me about tardigrades is how they are resistant to so many things. Like it would make sense to have resistance to one or two things, but all those things? Why is that even needed? Do they keep ending up in bad situations?

[throwup238]

It’s a form of evolutionary cross-tolerance. The mechanisms that tardigrades evolved to handle the hydration/dehydration cycle in moss just happen to be very effective at protecting them from radiation and a bunch of other environments.

That’s not a very satisfying answer until you dig into the biology that makes it happen. The mechanisms that protect cells from environmental stress are useful for many different kinds of stressors.

[begueradj]

> "Like it would make sense to have resistance to one or two things, but all those things? "

It makes sens, and all organisms and creatures would be more than happy to evolve to where they have resistance to everything.

That's a way to remain healthy, strong and spread own genes as much as possible for a long time.

[jajko]

There is usually some energy cost associated to keeping resistance unless critically needed. Or limited place on genome.

Any organism from virus to human will happily shed over time (generations) any resistance we now consider crucial to survival, just change its environment enough.