This Creature Has the Most Legs of Any Living Animal
upstart writes:
The first true millipede has been discovered in Australia. It has the most legs of any living animal:
Millipedes have lots of legs. It's defining feature of this creature, which is neither worm nor insect.
However, despite a name derived from the Latin for thousand (mille) and feet (pes), no millipede has been found with more than 750 legs -- until now.
Scientists have discovered the first millipede that has more than 1,000 legs -- 1,306 to be precise -- and the most legs of any living creature on Earth. It was found living 60 meters (200 feet) below ground in a drill hole created for mineral exploration in Western Australia.
The eyeless invertebrate -- it's 3.7 inches (9.5 centimeters) long and 0.04 inch (1 millimeter) wide -- has 330 body segments, antennae, a beak for feeding and a cone-shaped head.
"It's as if you pulled a 3-inch white thread from a shirt (but it had 1,306 legs)," said Paul Marek, an associate professor at the department of entomology at Virginia Tech via email.
How do you count the legs of such a tiny creature?
To make sure no limbs were missed or counted twice, Marek said he color-coded each 10-leg segment using a high-resolution image of the uncurled millipede in Adobe Illustrator.
"I counted three times, and it took about 1 hour," said Marek, the author of the study that published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.
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