Virginia, Gatra.com- The newly discovered millipede breaks the world record for the most legs. The newly discovered millipede species has more legs than any other creature on the planet, more than 1,300. Many-legged creatures that live deep in the bowels of the earth. Live Science, 16/12.
“The word ‘millipede’ is always a bit of a misnomer,” said Paul Marek, an entomologist at Virginia Tech University and lead author of a study describing the newly discovered species. Of all the other known millipedes, the legs are much less than the name suggests. With many species having less than 100 legs. As of now, the record holder is a species called Illacme plenipes, known deep-dwellers to have as much as 750 feet.
But the newly discovered species, Eumilipes persephone -named after Persephone, daughter of Zeus who Hades brought to the underworld- is the most famous animal on the planet. One specimen Marek analyzed was 1,306 feet long, which is a record-breaking feat.
The new world record holder is a pale, eyeless creature with a long, thread-like body that is almost 100 times longer than it is wide. Its conical head has large antennae for navigating a dark world governed by pheromones, and a beak optimized for eating mushrooms. The legs are hard to count because the animal tends to twist around like a tiny watch spring, Marek said.
“I suspect these animals are very long-lived,” Marek told Live Science. Millipedes grow steadily, adding body segments, called rings, throughout their lives. Entomologists can count these segments like tree rings to establish the relative ages between individuals of the same species.
In all, Marek analyzed four specimens — two males and two females — all of which were of different lengths and different ages. The shortest of the bunch has 198 rings and 778 feet. The longest has 330 rings and 1,306 feet. Given how often other millipede species add body segments, this suggests E. persephone usually live between 5 and 10 years, compared to the typical 2-year lifespan of other millipedes.
However, don’t expect to see one of these rummage through your backyard leaf litter. This species is found 200 feet (60 meters) below the Earth’s surface in a relatively unexplored environment built of iron and volcanic rock formations.
The creature was first seen in the region of Western Australia known as Goldfields, which is the link for mineral extraction. Companies sourcing nickel and cobalt drill deep, narrow pits between 65 and 328 feet (20 and 100 m) deep, Marek said. If the miners otherwise find this metal, the pit will be closed and abandoned.
“Some time ago, entomologists from Western Australia came up with the idea to sample these boreholes,” because they provide the perfect opportunity to peek into the underground ecosystem. By lowering a cup of leaf litter and other detritus to a certain depth, waiting a few weeks, and then picking it up, researchers were able to sample a wide variety of life that thrives deep beneath our feet. The multi-legged species on the planet is just one such discovery.
The new findings suggest “there are more discoveries to be made,” Marek said. And although species that live so deep beneath our feet may appear estranged from life on the surface, these ecosystems play an important ecological role associated with surface life, Marek said. Underground decomposers help recycle the nutrients that life on the surface relies on, and in the deep layers of the soil, these animals live by filtering toxins from our drinking water. Yet we still know very little about the world beneath our feet.
“There’s a lot more biodiversity out there,” he said, “We don’t have the full picture yet.”
–
