The Animal Uprising™ has a new warrior. This beast can work in complete darkness and we here at Blue Crab Boulevard fear that it will be unleashed on unsuspecting sleeping humans in the near future. Fear the Enormous, blind, albino millipedes!
Two albino millipedes have come out of their cavernous hiding places to represent an entirely new genus of these leggy organisms.
Scientists spotted the millipedes in caves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. One species was found in a cave on the South Rim and the other in two caves on the North Rim.
"We knew the millipedes likely represented two distinct species because the two populations were separated by the Grand Canyon," said biologist J. Judson Wynne, a cave expert at Northern Arizona University who also works for the U.S. Geologic Survey. "The fact these two species belong to an entirely new genus was a great surprise to us."
Wynne made the discovery with Kyle Voyles, a cave expert with the Bureau of Land Management.
A genus is a major subdivision within a family of living things that typically includes more than one species.
Before they ever ended up in the caves, these millipedes were ready for a life of constant darkness, high humidity and scarce food. They lack functional eyes, which would be useless in the blackout conditions, and have no pigment since there is no need for protection from the sun's rays. Instead the cave critters have lots of legs and feelers for finding the rare speck of food washed into the cave from above.
Our incoherent informants tell us that this is actually an aerial shot of the monsters. If you look really, really closely in the lower left of the picture you can see the tiny people fleeing in terror. It's just like a bad Japanese horror movie! There is one bit of encouraging news, however. The beasts are very slow to get moving for an attack. It takes a long time to get its shoes on.
