He is heroic, resistant and less than a long millimeter: he meets the invertebrate of 2025 of the year | Patrick Barkham

IF you have not voted in the recent vote, you lost yourself. Here it was a vote in which all 10 candidates were creative and morally inappropriate, a vote stuck by Dubbie Hall, deceptive polls or demagogues. And if you are looking for inspiration from a strength figure that is also strangely pretty, then do not look beyond the winner of 2025: Milnesio TardigradumA multi -meter microscopic animal reminiscent of a pig wrapped in a huge down jacket.

Thousands of guardian readers all over the world voted in the competition, which we invented to celebrate the neglected and unknown heroes of our planet.

It is easy to remain indifferent to invertebrates. In cities or in the countryside, small things without spin barely touch our life. The animals we adore tend to have thorns: birds that have adapted to live alongside us or mammals that we co -opted as pets or protein sources.

But we Backbone beasts are a small minority, just 5% of the planet’s species. Most of life on earth has chosen a path without spin and are animals of extraordinary diversity: beetles, bivalves, bees; Corals, crabs, cephalopods; Snail, spiders and sponges.

Many of these animals perform vital functions for our habitable planet. Invertebrates Provide the vast majority of pollination that allows us to cultivate food and enjoy flowers. Invertebrates create ground and keep it fertile. They clean the water and the ordered earth, devouring the poop or the animals in decomposition, rejecting everything, from bad smells to fatal diseases. Of course, some also spread diseases and can shave, parasites or afflicts human life. But the invertebrates-and in places dominated by man had completely dispelled, they were irrefutably disappearing-the sapiens followed quickly.

Somehow, however, to underline their importance for human prosperity decreases these animals. They are not simply small boring butler who diligently hurry in the service of their human masters. They are gloriously independent animals. They don’t need half of us as much as we need. They also embody ways of life that seem extraordinarily exotic to our eyes.

Among the 10 selected animals – all appointed by the global community of Guardian readers – there is the pice bites of the languageA tiny crustacean that rakes in the gills of a fish and clings to the tongue, eating what the fish eats and share enough so that the fish remains alive – for years. Then there is the Spider fen raft: runs on the ground, walks on the water and even dives under it in search of prey – small fish and dragonflies – larger than itself.

The winner, one of the Tardigradi, is particularly impressive. Milnesio Tardigradum He endured all five previous planetary extinction events. Having said that, it was a shy for some individuals to survive to be thrown into the external space as an experiment. His victory could show that we are attracted to small but resilient animals in times of global political turbulence. When we feel small and powerless, the microscopic latecrads give us hope.

In raw journalistic terms, all these invertebrates are great stories. For me and my colleagues, spending most of our days diligently report other examples of how we are degrading and destroying life on Earth, the invertebrate of the Year competition is a light relief – for us and, hopefully, even for you.

But something happens when we start sharing more than these stories without spin. Each animal challenges our vision of the anthropocentric world. We realize that our lifestyles are strange as the I commitA giant grasshopper without flight and jumpless. Perhaps we also reflect on the value of a diversified thought within our own species.

And above all, we begin to notice small things around us. What is that fly that rubs its body with the forearms on the thinking of the finish? Why is that ant is so much hurry? We begin to take an interest in the actions of our neighbors.

The great American biologist Eo Wilson provided that human life would not survive for a long time at the disappearance of invertebrates. But he also devised a plastic term for this era with ancient Greek: the hermocene, a new isolated place. Ours is not only the anthropocene dominated by man; It is an era of solitude.

When I looked around me the other day on a lively London railway platform, I couldn’t see another friend or close. There was no trace of any other animal, plant or mushrooms. Only us. We are a gregarious species and we are becoming solitary and we barely make ourselves breaking our hearts.

So the competition of invertebrates of the year helps us to seek ties with friendly neighbors, who live so differently by us but who thrive the same.

By filling out the list of 10, I came to see them as global celebrity. Then I entered my normal suburban garden for a break in the sun. Idly staring at the space, I noticed a little flying Narwhal. He was humming like an bee, pretty and soft like an bee, but in reality it was an escape to a dark-cut-a cut of our elections. His long and rigid proboscis was like a Narwhal zanna. As he flew, he dropped the eggs on the grass – near invisible nests of solitary bees so that his children could eat the offspring of bees. Perhaps, but a small sign of a healthy ecosystem is collected: pollinators, predators and parasites, all together.

Now we are not adapting. Note invertebrates is a small step in recognizing that we are not alone and we share our planet with a wonderful multitude of life and we must do better to live gently by their side.