h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Water Bears - A799266
Author: CRC - U199803

Water bears the most interesting creature in your backyard.

Hi, CRC!

I only had time for a quick look at this. I think it would be worth mentioning somewhere that in terms of classification, these little animals are put in a phylum or group by themselves.

I'll take a closer look when I'm back next week!

Azara

Cool entry

One or two little suggestions:

How about changing the title to Water Bears- Tardigrade? That makes it clearer if anyone is looking under the 'proper' name.

'The real name for water bears is Tardigrade, their real name and the name of their phylum.'

A quick footnote explaining what a 'phylum' is wouldn't go amiss.

'Tardagrades look an awful lot like bears, except that they have eight legs, and they are transparent. on each of their eight legs, they have up to eight claws, and you can see their guts.'

Umm, then in what way do they look like bears?

'Also, it lowers its water contenet to less than 1%.'

Should be 'content'.

'Basically, a tardigrade is a VERY interesting animal. Living from the frozen artic sea to the moss of the tropical rain forests. With 400 species, We can be amazed for a long time.'

400 species of what? tardigrade?

Apart from these little things, great work!

I never knew of such creatures before reading this entry. Fascinating.

There is some work to be done on it, but there's very definately a Guide Entry in there.

Why, for instance, can't they breathe without a film of water around them? What's a rotifer? What kind of 'stuff' do they have built on to them? Is it really possible for the tardigrades which have only females in their species to procreate? They'd have to be asexual, and therefore wouldn't have males or females. Perhaps they're hermaphrodite. "...it lowers its metabolism to 0.01% of normal or doesn't even exsist." If it didn't exist, it couldn't come back to life.

When you write a piece for submission to The Guide, it's good to assume that the person reading it will not know the answers to such questions... a bit like me really

For sure, they sound like a very interesting animal

Are you back yet CRC? I;m looking forward to seing this in the EG!

Fascinating entry. Needs spell checking. I agree with KA on this.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've therefore moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Yay!

I'll be the subeditor for this entry. The new version is at A827282. I've run it through the spell checker once.

Since CRC has been out, I may hold off on this a bit to see what kind of response he has.