World's Leggiest Animal, Part 2

What's up frens?!

Merry Christmas!!! 🎄🎁

And now that we got over the Christmas wishes and shit let's return to the topic of the day!

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Many, many years ago I made a post about the world's leggiest animal, Illacme plenipes, a millipede where adults routinely have over 600 legs, with one recorded individual having 750 legs!

Funny how time flies, that post was about 7 years ago!

Well, today I learnt that a few years ago in 2021 the world record changed legs hands, and now belongs to Eumillipes persephone from western Australia... Of course it would be from Australia 😆😂

And so far, it's the only known species to live up to the name "millipede" as it possesses over a thousand legs, as individuals have over 1000 legs with the record specimen having 1306 legs, which belonged to a female. That's a lot of legs 😆

It was discovered as part of a biological survey conducted in remote mining regions of Western Australia, with specimens found in depths ranging from 15 to 60 meters.

The species is named after Persephone, the Greek goddess of the underworld due to its subterranean lifestyle. As for the generic name Eumillipes, it means "true millipede", a reference to being the only know millipede with over a thousand legs.

Here's a photo collage from the paper that first describes the species

(A) female with 330 segments and 1,306 legs. (B) ventral view of legs (male holotyp). (C) dorsal view of head and ventral view of gonopods (male). Scale bars, 0.5 mm. source

The species is pale, eyeless, and slender, all adaptations for its dark, underground habitat.

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As for its diet it's a mystery, possibly fungi found on plant roots.

Anyways, here's a link to Wikipedia if you would like to learn more. And here's one to the paper describing the species with even more technical jargon.

Ok friends, this is it for today. See you soon with more strange animals 😁

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