the.com/millipede
the overachiever who promised a thousand legs and never broke 750.
means A long, many-segmented arthropod that creeps along on a great number of short legs, two pairs to each body segment.
from From Latin millipeda, the woodlouse, stitched together from mille ("thousand") and pes, pedis ("foot") — the same pes that gives us pedal and pedestrian. The name is honest about the spirit if not the arithmetic: millipedes do have hundreds of legs, but they rarely deliver the promised thousand. Its cousin centipede leans on centum ("hundred") with the same flair for rounding up.
- record legs
- one species has 1,306, finally earning the name
- ancient giant
- prehistoric kin grew over six feet long
- chemical defense
- some secrete cyanide when threatened
- slow mover
- legs move in elegant waves, speed optional
- first walkers
- among earliest animals to breathe air on land
illacme tobini — species with 422 legs, discovered in california caves in 2012
archispirostreptus gigas — african giant millipede reaching 38cm long, heaviest millipede species
diplopoda kampuchea — species named after cambodia with over 300 leg pairs