The fauna, which lives in the depth of the rock, in cracks, crevices or caves, has hardly been researched. Surprises are possible at any time, as now, as biologists in Australia, the traps emptied, which they had put in a mining company at 60 meters deep. Eight copies of a thousand feet that actually had 1000 legs had nestled in the containers who were caught with rotting leaves. More precisely: 1306.
The team led by Paul Marek from Virgina Tech in Blacksburg, USA, called Eumillipes persephone the species: The »Eu-« stands for »real«, the »millipes« for centipedes, and the Greek goddess of the underworld Persephone was godmother because the animal is at home in an underground habitat.
The specimens were around ten centimeters long and thread -like thin.
The longest animal, a female, made it to 330 body segments.
The shape of the blind animal is probably helping to move around in the underground columns.
The previous record holder when it comes to the number of legs only had 750 pieces.
Thousands are born with four segments and repeatedly add new ones in the course of their lives, the authors write in the journal »Scientific Reports«.
With Eumillipes Persehone, this process seems to go on without end.
The centipede lives in the ore-rich underground of eastern Goldfields Province in Western Australia. Surface temperatures sometimes reach more than 46 degrees Celsius, and the region is also extremely dry. But in the groundwater layers at depth, however, the thermometer always remains below 22 degrees – a stable climate over millions of years, which offered a home to species that became too hot and too dry further up on the Australian continent.
