Millipede with the most legs is rediscovered after 80 years.

The world's leggiest millipede — and the one that comes closest to actually living up to its name — has made a surprise reappearance decades after it was first discovered. Illacme plenipes, which has up to 750 legs, has been spotted in a tiny patch of San Benito County, California, the first time it had been seen since 1926.

Although there are some 10,000 known millipede species, none actually possesses the mythical 1,000 legs. I. plenipes comes close, however, although the 12 new specimens unveiled by Paul Marek and Jason Bond have a wide range of different tallies. Females definitely wear the (presumably rather complicated) trousers in this species: the three adult females described here each have more than 660 legs, compared with between 318 and 402 for the four adult males, and fewer still for the five juveniles.

 

 

The variation may be because these creatures continue to add to their collection even after reaching sexual maturity, the authors suggest in a Brief Communication in this week's Nature. Females can reach more than 30 millimetres in length, and yet the millipedes are a mere half a millimetre wide, which makes the complexity of their legs and reproductive organs all the more surprising.

Courtesy of Nature.