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Tardigrades, known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged segmented micro-animals. They were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, who called them Kleiner Wasserbär (little water bear). In 1777, the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani named them Tardigrada, which means "slow steppers".