Photo: twitter.com/apheloria
Centipede Eumillipes рersephone
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The representative of the species Eumillipes persephone has more than 1300 legs – this is a record among all living things.
A millipede with a record number of limbs – 1306 was found in Australia. Before that, no such animal has been found with more than 750 legs. CNN with a link to an article in Scientific Reports.
The centipede, dubbed Eumillipes persephone, was discovered last summer at a depth of 60 m underground in a borehole.
The eyeless invertebrate is 9.5 centimeters long, 1 millimeter wide, 330 body segments, antennae, feeding beak, and a tapered head.
“It’s like pulling white thread out of a shirt that had 1,306 legs,” said Paul Marek, assistant professor of entomology at Virginia Institute of Technology.
To make sure no limb was missed or recalculated twice, Marek color-coded each segment of ten legs using a high-resolution image of an unwrapped millipede in Adobe Illustrator.
“I counted three times, and it took about an hour,” – admitted the author of the study.
Taxonomic analysis has shown that Eumillipes persephone is distantly related to the previous record holder for the number of legs, the California centipede species Illacme plenipes.
It is assumed that the large number of segments and legs that have developed in both species allow them to move through narrow holes in the soil.
Earlier it was reported that in Croatia found the deepest living centipede in the world.
In Australia, giant centipedes eat seabird chicks
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