Tardigrade Eggs Hatching
Channel: Curtis Eckerman
Date: 2018-02-21

This is a video of Tardigrade (water bear) eggs hatching.  The water sample was collected in a small stream just outside of the Austin Community College Riverside campus by a student, Leah Antone, on February 20, 2018.

I initially discovered the water bear in the sample and saved it to examine later only to find the shed with eggs and thus video tape the event of the eggs hatching.

So what looks like a larger tardigrade at the bottom half of the video is actually its shed with eggs in it that are hatching.  The female will shed their skin with eggs in it and males will fertilize the eggs later.

I want to give credit to Leah Antone for collecting the sample and Stephanie Martin for helping me with finding the tardigrade again.

For more information on Tardigrades check out the wikipedia page on them.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade