Happy Thought for 14 October 2022

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

(If you have a young child at home, you may already know this / remember this fact but)….

 

Centipedes have 100 legs and Millipedes have 1000 legs, right?

Nah, that’d be too easy.

 

Both centipedes and millipedes have bodies made up of lots (and lots) of segments. The difference is that centipedes have one pair of legs per segment. Millipedes have two pairs of legs per segment.

 

In fact, there has never been a recorded sighting of a millipede with more than 1000 legs. The record-holder has around 750.

Well, that was true until last December, when an absolute wonder of the natural world was found in a mine in Western Australia. The species was named Eumillipes Persephone, and this one creature nearly doubled the record.

 

How many legs does it have, you ask?

One thousand, three hundred and six.

1,306.

One of the best parts of this story is how the discoverer counted the legs. It’s pretty much exactly how you would do it: “by taking high-resolution images of his millipedes, then he counts the legs manually, over and over, using Adobe Illustrator to mark the segments he’s already accounted for.”

 

I also love this Figure in the journal article, comparing the “length” of various millipedes, by number of legs:


Numbers in parentheses after species names are the maximum segment count for the taxon. Species with super-elongation present denoted in bold. Millipede silhouettes sized relative to one other. Marek, P.E., Buzatto, B.A., Shear, W.A. et al. The first true millipede—1306 legs long. Sci Rep 11, 23126 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02447-0.

 

 

You also may need to know that people who study millipedes are known as Diplopodologists. You’re welcome for that Scrabble score.

 

If you want to find out more about this millipede, the discovery of this and other related, super-many-legged species, check out this article in The Atlantic, or go straight to the Scientific Reports journal article describing this species.

 

Or if you just want to have a moment of zen, watch a millipede walk: https://youtu.be/7PKatD810xg

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you, we love reading your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Thought for 30 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     At the end of this week, possibly as you are reading this email, you get to have some separation between work colleagues and home life. (If you’re retired… well, I’m already jealous, so don’t @ me with a “ what is a week-end ” sort of quote).   But four very lucky people (yes, I’m somehow jealous of them as well), this week began a 378-day “week”, being shut in with their colleagues.   June 25 2023 was the start of the CHAPEA Mission 1 - a simulated Mars habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Centre. For just over one year, these four people will live as if they were on Mars, giving us valuable insights into logistics and human psychology. You can watch the emotional press-conference / shutting-the-door-behind-them , it’s actually very cute! Mission patch for Chapea-1 https://www.nasa.gov/chapea/mission1  with the mission motto Ad Martus A Domo and the participants' names Selariu, Haston, Jones and Brockwell.   Of course, this is far from
Read more

Happy Thought for 23 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is opening up the origins of the universe and very distant galaxies, stars and exoplanets to our understanding.   You’d think we’re only looking that far because we’ve figured out how everything works closer to us, right?   Wrong! Science is great because there’s always something new to explore and figure out. Here are just a few of the mysteries that remain for us to solve, or maybe just a few things you didn’t know, right here in our own solar system:   Q: What is our sun’s surface actually made of? A: We’re… not 100% sure, actually! We know mostly, by analysing the light that comes from the sun. You see, every time light passes through an object, including a bunch of gas, it changes the spectrum that we see – that object, or gas, absorbs some of the energy of light at specific wavelengths (or sometimes absorbs-and-re-emits-at-slightly-different-wavelengths). So astronomers can tell what gasses a sta
Read more

Happy Thought for 26 January 2024

Image
Have a Happy Thought: While some of our holiday breaks may be fresh in mind, others may be distant memories. Either way, I hope you’re entering 2024 with at least some positive energy. One way to hold on to that (or maybe create it if that’s what you need) may be to introduce frequent, but short, breaks into your day, ideally getting out into some blue- or green-space.   Image: A stump next to a tree-shaded pathway has had googly-eyes drawn onto it so it looks like a startled face. Picture by author. In fact, taking mini-breaks might benefit your physical health as much as your mental health! A recent study out of Columbia University in the US has found that taking frequent-but-short breaks, 5 minutes out of every 30, can have really impressive impacts on physical and mental health like: Blood sugar Insulin Blood pressure Mood Fatigue Cognitive ability  (apparently, I need this a bit, it took me three tries and spell-checker to spell cogni
Read more