5. WATER BEARS ARE TOUGH, TINY, AND TOTALLY FREAKY
Small and strangely hardy animals called water bears—or tardigrades—can survive the harshest of environments, including outer space. Stick a tardigrade in an 80-celsius freezer for 10 years and it starts running around 20 minutes after thawing.
When scientists sequenced their genome, they were shocked to find the animals get a huge chunk—about 17 percent—from foreign DNA. For comparison, most animals have less than one percent of their genome from foreign DNA.
“We knew many animals acquire foreign genes, but we had no idea that it happens to this degree,” says Bob Goldstein, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
And finally, a “paeleo chicken?” Head to the next page for that weird research…
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