Tiny worm with over 400 legs, 200 poison pumps found in California cave

NEW DELHI: Scientists have discovered a bizarre new worm with 414 legs, 200 poison glands, silk-secreting hair and four penises. Belonging to the millipede family, one specimen was found hiding under a rock in the unexplored dark marble caves in Sequoia National Park, California. From its physical and genetic description, it looks like this millipede is an evolutionary cousin of the leggiest creature on the planet - Illacme plenipes, which has 750 legs.

The leggy worm was found by Jean Krejca of Zara Environmental LLC, while exploring the caves along with others. They also discovered and catalogued many spiders, pseudoscorpions, and flies besides the tiny threadlike millipede.

The new millipede - Illacme tobini is named after cave biologist Ben Tobin, was sent to diplopodologists (scientists who specialize in the study of millipedes) Bill Shear of Hampden-Sydney College and Paul Marek of Virginia Tech. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.


The new species may possess "only" 414 legs, compared to its relative's 750, yet, it has a similar complement of bizarre anatomical features, including a body armed with 200 poison glands, silk-secreting hair, and 4 penises. Its whole body is covered with long hair that exudes silk. It has paired nozzles on each of its over 100 segments that squirt a defense chemical of an unknown nature.

"I never would have expected that a second species of the leggiest animal on the planet would be discovered in a cave 150 miles away," says Paul Marek, Assistant Professor in the Entomology Department at Virginia Tech. Its closest relative lives under giant sandstone boulders outside of San Juan Bautista, California.

The authors note that by exploring our world and documenting the biodiversity of this planet we can prevent anonymous extinction, a process in which a species goes extinct before we know of its role in the ecosystem, potential benefit to humanity, or its beauty.