Water Bears Delight Crowds at Science and Engineering Festival

Kellyann Jones (left) shows Science and Engineering Festival attendees euglena and rotifers on an iPad CellScope.

I came packing water bears. There were crowds of bright-eyed families gathered outside the doors of the DC convention center early on Saturday morning, awaiting the start of the 2016 Science and Engineering Festival, a free-to-the-public event, which was expecting upwards of 350,000 attendees to browse the roughly 3,000 booths during the three-day festival.

My water bears were part of the show. ASCB’s “Explore the Microscopic World” booth featured iPad CellScopes, which were a big hit at the 2014 Festival. With the CellScopes, the ASCB booth crew was planning to show off live microscopic organisms like Euglena, Stentor, and vinegar eels (which are actually nematodes). On hand were ASCB members Pinar Gurel, Scott Wilkinson, Kellyann Jones, Jordan Beach, Rebecca Meseroll, and Cathy Ramos. They volunteered to staff the booth, demonstrate the Cellscope, and answer questions from the curious of all ages, such as “Did it hatch from an egg?” “Will it hurt me?” And most frequently, “How do I get an iPad microscope?”

But my microscopic water bears, otherwise known as tardigrades or moss piglets, were the runaway hit at the ASCB booth. We ordered the other organisms through Carolina Biological Supply but the water bears were mine, harvested from a DIY field expedition. I went into my backyard, scraped some moss from a rock and headed for the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the District of Columbia. At the ASCB booth, we added water and gently squeezed a sample into a demonstration slide. Sure enough, there were live rotifers and water bears among the plant and dirt debris. The waterbears looked like microscopic pandas eating pseudo-bamboo as they slowly meandered across the field of view, munching on bits of moss. My water bears took our corner of the Science Festival by storm. Attendees clustered around the CellScopes, soaking up tales of tardigrade indestructibility (they live in hot springs, remain alive through freezing, and are the first organism known to survive the vacuum of space).

Water bears once lived in obscurity but they have been basking of late in the media spotlight. At the ASCB booth, one parent showed me a picture on her iPhone of the water bear cookie-cake she made for her son. “We’re so excited that we found tardigrades here!” she told me. I’m buzzed to have discovered my thriving home moss piglet population too.