There's your novel: Return of the Tardy Tardigrades.LOL! Indeed. I hadn't noticed that before. Makes sense as tardigrades were taken into space years ago. I can't recall if it was on the ISS but I think it was even earlier (Space Lab).
So, very likely they had contact with aliens who then assumed these were Earth's dominating species and are now sending this crop pic as a sort of a PM or chat invitation.
Or some tardigrades from back then who were subjected to the hard vacuum of space escaped, mutated and are now sending an invitation to their relatives to join them on some distant planet.
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