If scamperinginvertebratesgive you pause , read no further . Everyone else — meetEumillipes Kore , a freshly discover species of millipede with an astonishing 1306 wooden leg .
The member - heavy animal wasfoundroughly 200 feet below ground in an exploratory mining operation in — where else — Australia . At 3.5 column inch recollective and just four - one-hundredth of an inch wide , it has more legs than any other knownanimal .
The determination , which was published inScientific Reports , note that this might be our first find of a truthful millipede — the name means “ thousand feet , ” but no coinage had ever been seen sporting that many legs . A distinctive millipede has 100 to 200 ; a centipede , penny-pinching to 400 .
“ In my judgement this is a arresting fauna , a wonder of evolution , ” Bruno Buzatto , subject co - author and principal biologist at Bennelongia Environmental Consultants in Perth , Australia , say Reuters . “ It lay out the most extreme elongation find to date in millipedes , which were the first brute to conquer land . And this coinage in particular manage to adapt to live ten of meters deeply in the stain , in an arid and harsh landscape where it is very arduous to find any millipedes surviving in the surface . ”
Having so many legs has likely been a benefit forEumillipes persephone , which can apply its propellent strength to burrow deeper and into more narrow area of soil .
Four of the milliped were find , none live , and only one had 1306 legs . Others had 998 or fewer . The number of legs are n’t uniform , researchers say , because they add and throw off four - legged segments through life as they moult . The old a millipede is , the more legs it ’s likely to have . In theory , a millepede specimen with even more legs might be linger somewhere .
[ h / tReuters ]
