#siphonophoridae

[crevicedwelling]

a highlight of my Singapore trip was this fabulous siphonophorid millipede! this super-leggy animal is one of a relatively small group of millipedes to evolve sucking mouthparts. most siphonophoridans I’ve met are tiny but this one was pretty big at some 4cm long.

its face manages to be so cute with just two chubby antennae and a piercing beak! these probably feed on fungal hyphae or some sort of biofilms.

some camera photos of the same suctorial friend:

and a larger one, seen at night on a tree trunk:

[john-frog]

Part II of my spec project Batrachiterra, this is a lesser post simply containing the seeded species list.

These are the frogs seeded, note that D. auratus represents the genus Dendrobates who also includes two other species.

Seeded species

Many species were added in order to make the planet habitable for human and frog colonists such as:

Photosynthetic organisms

Pinus spp.

Passiflora spp.

Bromelia spp.

Bryophytes

Algae

Lichens

Grasses

Fungi

Polyporales

Tuber spp.

Agaricus spp.

Suillaceae

Amanitaceae

Animalia

Isopoda

Oniscideans

Cirolanidae

Centipedes

Scolopendromorpha

Geophilomorpha

Millipedes

Oniscomorpha

Platydesmida

Polyzoniida

Siphonophorida

Diptera

Culicidae

Asilidae

Sialis spp.

Solenopsis spp.

Xylocopa spp.

Gastropoda

Eupulmonata

Systellomatophora

Styllomatophora

Oligochaeta

Cnidaria

Cubozoa

Scyphozoa

Cirripedia

Tunicata

Nematoda

Bacteria

Zooplankton

[kaijuno]

Sorry, really active today, but I just. I found an article, okay?

“A redescription of the leggiest animal, the millipede Illacme plenipes, with notes on its natural history and biogeography (Diplopoda, Siphonophorida, Siphonorhinidae)” by Paul E. Marek, William A. Shear, and Jason E. Bond

Now the word millipede means “thousand-footed” and see, the thing is, most millipedes don’t even come close. They’re part of the myriapods, which means “myriad-footed,” more literally 10,000-footed but as with the word’s current popular usage the Greeks also meant an unspecific fuck-ton. Myriapods were likely the first creatures that set foot on land and there’s convincing analysis that our earliest insect fossil might actually be a myriapod.

(Actually, side note, recent genetic studies have identified horseshoe crabs as arachnids. Not “related to arachnids” but actual fucking arachnids. Fuck.)

Anyway whatever this millipede was described early last century and then was never considered until it had to be redescribed by the above authors and it is... weird, even for one of these Lovecraftian myriapod fucks.

For one, it’s rare but also not exactly “exotic.” You would expect the “leggiest” detritivore (feeds on detritus like fallen leaves) to come from a rainforest but no, as far as we can tell it lives in one county of... central fucking California. My fucking backyard.

Also as for leggiest, it comes the closest to actually living up to the name millipede with just shy of 800. That’s more than double the closest runner up.

This thing is fucking MASSIVE. It’s basically a goddamned SNAKE.

See that scale bar in the bottom lefthand corner? It’s gotta be a fucking METER—

Wait... hold on—

This thing has more limbs than my extended family, the most legs of ANY species EVER, and it maxes out at THREE CENTIMETERS. SMALLER THAN MY FUCKING PINKY. It’s fucking half as long as a house centipede but has nigh on 80 times more legs.

Nature SUCKS. The more I learn about it the less sense it makes. This shit is for the birds, I am never reading about any animal ever again, I hate this so much.