Question Can you guess what the 2025 invertebrate of the year is?

Invertebrate of the Year 2025

April this year, 'The Guardian' released a roll call of potential invertebrates to contend for the title of 'Invertebrate of the Year'.

The contenders included 10 animals that readers could vote for:

1. The Tongue-biting louse (Cymothoa exigua)
2. Greater bee-fly (Bombylius major)
3. Waterbear (Milnesium tardigradum)
4. The Flamboyant cuttlefish (Ascarosepion pfefferi)
5. Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis)
6. Bdelloid Rotifer (Philodina roseaola)
7. Fen Raft Spider (Dolomedes plantarius)
8. Amber Comet fly (Pyractomena vexillaria)
9. Wētāpunga (Deinacrida heteracantha)
10. Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)

Of these wonderful animals, only one could be the 2025 invertebrate of the year.

The winner:

Milnesium tardigradum, or the waterbear!

This little creature belongs to the class 'Eutardigrada' and the phylum 'Tardigrada', and reaches only 0.5mm long.

Which invertebrate from the list is your favourite?

From the Article:
'It's heroic, hardy and less than a millimetre long: meet the 2025 invertebrate of the year'
Published April 7th, 2025
By Patrick Barkham
The Gaurdian

'It is easy to remain indifferent to invertebrates. In cities or in the countryside, small, spineless things barely touch our lives. The animals we adore tend to have spines: birds that have adapted to living alongside us or mammals we’ve co-opted as pets or sources of protein.

But we backboned beasts are a tiny minority, barely 5% of the planet’s species. Most life on Earth has chosen a spineless path, and they are animals of amazing diversity: beetles, bivalves, bees; corals, crabs, cephalopods; snails, spiders and sponges.

Many of these animals perform vital functions for our habitable planet. Invertebrates supply the vast majority of pollination that enables us to grow food, and enjoy flowers. Invertebrates make soil, and keep it fertile. They clean water and tidy land, devouring poo or decomposing animals, repelling everything from bad smells to deadly diseases. Of course, some also spread diseases, and may swarm, pest or plague human life. But were invertebrates to completely disappear – and in human-dominated places, they are irrefutably disappearing – sapiens would swiftly follow.

Somehow, however, stressing their importance to human prosperity diminishes these animals. They are not simply dull little butlers dutifully scurrying in the service of their human masters. They are gloriously independent animals. They don’t need us half as much as we need them. They also embody ways of life that look extraordinarily exotic to our eyes.'

'The winner, one of the tardigrades, is particularly impressive. Milnesium tardigradum has endured all five previous planetary extinction events. Given that, it was a doddle for some individuals to survive being chucked into outer space as an experiment.'

'So the Invertebrate of the Year contest helps us seek connection with friendly neighbours, who live so differently from us but who thrive all the same.'

'Noticing invertebrates is one small step in recognising that we are not alone, and we share our planet with a wondrous multitude of life and must do better to live gently alongside them.'


From the Article:
'Lego and tardigrades': When humans finally destroy the world, what will remain?
Published April 27th, 2025
By Patrick Barkham
The Gaurdian

'Our nominee, the 0.5mm-long Milnesium tardigradum, survived in outer space when plonked there as part of a European Space Agency experiment. Tardigrades can endure radioactivity, most cancers, extreme cold, scorching heat, zero gravity, being shot from a gun and being trapped in a freezer for – wait for it – 30 years.

Most remarkably of all, this astonishingly tough invertebrate is also incredibly cute. When the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze discovered these animals in 1773 he named them the “little water bear”. They’re also affectionately known as moss piglets, as their cute, plump forms can often be enjoyed if moss or lichen is put under a microscope.

Their name comes from the 18th-century Italian scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani, who named them “tardigrada” (“slow steppers”) after their plodding walking style on their four pairs of legs.

Like us, M tardigradum is an omnivore; unlike us, it grazes on algae while also predating rotifers, nematodes and other smaller tardigrades.

The secret to its resilience is its ability to suspend its metabolism and halt the ageing process. Tardigrades evolved in water, and require a film of water around their bodies to enable them to survive. If they are exposed to freezing or drying, they enter a desiccated state called a tun. In this state, they can survive for many years – instantly reviving when they encounter water.'


Sources:

Barkham, P. (2025, April 7). It’s heroic, hardy and less than a millimetre long: meet the 2025 invertebrate of the year. The Gaurdian. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/07/guardian-invertebrate-of-the-year-2025-natural-history

Barkham, P. (March 27, 2025). ‘Lego and tardigrades’: when humans finally destroy the world, what will remain?. The Gaurdian. www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/26/lego-and-tardigrades-when-humans-finally-destroy-the-world-what-will-remain