I've seen claims online that tardigrades can live for 30 years without food or water. A Nat Geo article says this, without attribution. My initial reaction was that this must be an estimate. Why would anyone wait 30 years to figure this out? But Japanese scientists actually did. In 2015 or so, researchers at the National Institute of Polar Research, in Tokyo, looked inside a freezer and found some old moss samples that had been collected from Antarctica in 1983. The moss had been stuffed into a plastic bag and then stored at -20 °C for the last 30.5 years. The researchers slowly thawed the moss and then rehydrated it. They found two living tardigrades and one tardigrade egg. At first, the animals moved really slowly, but then they moved a lot more after a few days and started eating algae. One of the tardigrades later laid eggs and reproduced. The other tardigrade died without reproducing. The egg also hatched and those offspring reproduced, too. The tardigrades seem to survive because they shut down their metabolisms and have proteins that protect their DNA from oxidative reactions over decades. So, in this case, an internet claim that sounds made up is actually true. Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cryobiol.2…