Apparently, giant tardigrades are all the rage on television today.

My son* loves the animated show, The Deep, and he recently discovered that the second season was on Netflix. Our whole family loves the show, and we binge watched a bunch of episodes together over a weekend.

One of the episodes of Deep deals with a giant tardigrade — a normally microscopic animal that is one of the toughest animals in existence. Tardigrades are so tough, that they can survive pretty much anywhere, even in the vacuum of space.

Fast forward to that Sunday night, while watching CBS’s new Star Trek Discovery, where the show featured — you guessed it — a giant tardigrade.

I guarantee neither creative team was thinking someone would beat them to using a giant tardigrade as a plot device. These two shows couldn’t be more different. One is an under-the-radar Australian animated show about futuristic sea exploration that streams on Netflix. And the other is the latest television iteration of one of the best known science fiction series. These ideas obviously developed in parallel and were inspired by the same creature.

“I guarantee neither creative team was thinking someone would beat them to using a giant tardigrade as a plot device.”

I guess, for me, this coincidence demonstrates that in today’s environment — with so many people creating so much content — truly original concepts seem like an impossible task. Even when you think you are creating something new, the reality is, someone else may be working on the same idea at the same time.

* Okay. I may love the show, too.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He's currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year. Follow Bob on Twitter, Instagram and Micro.Blog.