A new species of millipede has more legs than any other creature on the planet. The leggy creatures live deep below Earth's surface and are the only known ones to live up to their name.
The name "millipede" has always been a bit of a misconception, according to Paul Marek, an entomologist at Virginia Tech university. The species known as Illacme plenipes has as many as 750 legs and was the previous record-holder.
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The Eumilipes persephone is the leggiest known animal on the planet. The specimen analyzed has 1,306 legs.
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A pale, eyeless creature with a long, threadlike body is the new world record-holder. The cone-shaped head has enormous antennae for navigating a dark world, and a beak that is designed for feeding on fungi. The legs are hard to count because they coil like a spring.
A hint about these creatures' lifespan can be found in the large collection of legs.
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The legs of a male Eumillipes persephone are shown. Paul E. Marek, Bruno A. Buzatto, William A. Shear, Jackson C. Means, Dennis G. Black, Mark S. Harvey, and Juanita Rodriguez are all authors.
A view of the gonopods of a male Eumillipes persephone. Paul E. Marek, Bruno A. Buzatto, William A. Shear, Jackson C. Means, Dennis G. Black, Mark S. Harvey, and Juanita Rodriguez are all authors.
The image 1 of 2 is a picture.
The legs of a male Eumillipes persephone are shown. Paul E. Marek, Bruno A. Buzatto, William A. Shear, Jackson C. Means, Dennis G. Black, Mark S. Harvey, and Juanita Rodriguez are all authors.
The second image of 2.
A view of the gonopods of a male Eumillipes persephone. Paul E. Marek, Bruno A. Buzatto, William A. Shear, Jackson C. Means, Dennis G. Black, Mark S. Harvey, and Juanita Rodriguez are all authors.
"I think these animals are very long-lived," he said. They add body segments, called rings, throughout their lives. Tree rings can be counted to establish ages between individuals of the same species.
Two males and two females were analyzed by Marek and all of them were different ages. The shortest of the bunch had 778 legs and 198 rings. The longest had more than one thousand legs. The lifespan of other millipedes is 2 years, while E. persephone lives to be between 5 and 10 years old.
Don't expect to see one of these rummaging in your yard. The species was discovered 200 feet below Earth's surface in a relatively unexplored environment built from banded iron formations and volcanic rock.
The creatures were first seen in the Goldfields of Western Australia. The companies bore deep, narrow holes between 20 and 100 m deep. The holes are capped if the miners don't find any of the metals.
Entomologists from Western Australia came up with the idea to sample these boreholes because they provide the perfect opportunity to peer into subterranean ecosystems. Researchers can sample the wide variety of life thriving far below our feet by lowering cups of leaf litter to certain depths and then retrieving them. The leggiest species on the planet is one such discovery.
There are a lot more discoveries to be made. The ecology of the organisms that live so deep beneath our feet can seem unimportant on the surface, but they play an important role in the ecology. The animals that live in the deep soil are exposed to toxins from our drinking water. We don't know much about the world beneath our feet.
"We don't have the full picture yet," he said.
Live Science published the original article.
