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Illacme plenipes: Animal with about 750 legs rediscovered

bond east carolina university

It hasn’t been seen for decades, and perhaps its disappearance has given birth to rumors that the semi-mythical beast once lurked under boulders and roamed around on hundreds of pairs of legs! But, interestingly, this amazing animal has been spotted again in a ravine in California recently, after 80 years!

Named Illacme plenipes, the world’s leggiest animal was last found in 1928. It is a millipede – it seems to almost live up to its name. Though the females have up to 750 legs, they are only about 32 millimeters long and half a millimeter wide. The males are smaller having only 300 to 400 legs — two of which are modified into sex organs.

Congratulations Jason Bond and Paul Marek of East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina for rediscovering it. Though, the finding shows that the species live only in a ravine in San Benito county, a part of the California Floristic Province, according to them, the millipede relates to a certain millipedes found in biodiversity hotspots in Asia, southern Africa and Australasia.

Via: New Scientist

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