#legs

#legs

First Millipede With More Than 1,000 Legs FoundWhat do you call a millipede with more than a thousand legs? Hmm, a billipede?No, you call it Eumillipes persephone, because this isn't a joke. Until now, the millipede with the most legs had 750 legs. E. persephone has 1306 legs! This millipede was found 60 feet underground in Western Australia while a crew was digging a bore hole for mining purposes. The tiny creature is only about a millimeter wide, but to accommodate all those legs, its about ten centimeters long! While it has plenty of legs, E. persephone has no eyes. It doesn't need them, living underground. The millipede survives by eating fungus. Yeah, finding and publishing a new species is pretty exciting, but you have to wonder who exactly got the task of counting all those legs. I bet it was a grad student. Now, you may wonder why a millipede would even be called that if it has less than a thousand legs. Wouldn't you call such an creature a centipede? And there is a centipede with 382 legs- why isn't that called a millipede? The names have less to do with the number of legs and more to do with what kind of animal it is. Centipedes and millipedes are anatomically different. Read about Eumillipes persephone and its 1306 legs, and how to tell the difference between a centipede and a millipede at Real Clear Science. (Image credit: Paul E. Marak et al/Scientific Reports) #millipede #legs #centipede