Sea Spiders: Paddling and Plummeting

Sea Spiders aren't really spiders. They aren't even arachnids. In fact, they're barely more than legs. Not even the daddiest, longleggiest of Daddy Longlegs can out-leg a Sea Spider.

Thereuopoda

Image: Bernard DUPONT

I hope you like legs...

Veils From the Crypt

Video: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)

Cryptic monsters... undercover horrors... sleeper creepers... From the monsters under the bed to the ghosts in the attic, the vampire on the board of directors to the werewolf in the historical reenactment society, there's no getting away from them. Is your paperboy a ghoul? Is your sister-in-law a zombie? Are you absolutely sure you're not a fish-person?

The Blues VI

Image: Bernard DUPONT
Corythaeola cristata

It's Blue Monday! Mathematically proven to be the most depressing day of the year by qualified PR professionals who believe the best way to defeat it is with a holiday package bought from their clients. But there's no defeating it. It looms. It impends. It soon comes to a dark night of the soul near YOU! And there are no holidays from one's own soul.

And the Number of the Hallowe'en Horrors is 666

Its Halloween! That time of year when we draw black waters from the well of cosmic truth with death, draw deep breaths of chill, grave-leaden mist with darkness, and draw white, chalk outlines around corpses in the alleyway with evil. Woo!

Behold Death. He's wearing his Loch Ness Monster costume this year. Basically it's a dark green robe, a dark green handle for his scythe and a kind of lizard mask on the blade. It looks great and boy is he committed to the role. We've been trying to get him out of the swimming pool for hours!

Here be Darkness. She's been trying to teach the zombies about the miraculous power of make-up. I don't think it's going too well. Lipstick is supposed to stick to lips, not the other way round. There's bits of face everywhere!

Yonder is Evil. He's dressed up in a long, white robe with a little cardboard halo fixed onto his head with a piece of wire. He does that every year but it's hilarious every time!

Apheloria virginiensis

Image: Marshal Hedin

Hey, look! It's a beautiful, brightly-coloured millipede! You know what that means, right?

That's right. Cyanide! Yaaaay!

Trachelomegalus modestior

Image: Bernard DUPONT
Trachelomegalus modestior

It's a glorious, red millipede!

Pentagrammatical Décor of the Hallowe'en Horrors

It's Halloween! That time of year when we kick the bucket with death, kick our heels with darkness, and kick angelic beings in the shins with evil! Woo!

Feathertail Centipede

Image: Frupus

Oh no! It looks like people have put in so much effort into ruminating over the terrifying prospect of flying spiders they've completely overlooked another, far more likely, possibility:

FLYING CENTIPEDES!

Jelly Horns of Acanthanura

Image: Andy Murray
Acanthanura sp.

This is what happens when you splice a hedgehog with a jelly bean.

Water Springtail

Image Christian Fischer
Podura aquatica

Rising from peaceful, still waters, a huge colony of living tyres placidly congregate at an undisclosed location. They are Michelin Maggots, one of the earliest and most delicate stages of the Michelin Man life cycle.

Wandering Legs

We care for them, clean them and lovingly wrap them in linens to defend against the elements...

We walk them, break them and bend them to our merciless will, regardless of the pain, calluses or fungal growth...

But some day, all legs must fly the nest.

Deep Scenes from Wiring the Abyss

Here's a fantastic video from Ocean Networks Canada, featuring some highlights from their Wiring the Abyss expedition of 2012.

This Sea Cucumber is one of my favourites. What else would you expect to see if you opened Pandora's Box and unleashed all the evils of the world? A big, black cloud of noxious gas? A great, big dragon who lets out a big, black cloud of noxious gas every time he huffs and puffs? A pile of fortune cookies with stuff like "hate is cool" written inside?

Nope! Of course it's a Sea Cucumber! A small, translucent Sea Cucumber with weird little legs and weird little muck-plungers around its mouth. And a strange suggestion of devil wings on its back, as it floats in the darkness with ease, leisure and malevolence.

Let's cross our tentacles and hope they're not all quite so fiendish down there!

Wandering Leg Sausauge

Crurifarcimen vagans

It's a MILLIPEDE! I know it sounds like an innuendo from Sex and the City or whatever they're watching these days, but it's a millipede.

I looked it up and it turns out Sex and the City finished almost 10 years ago, not including the films. I can't believe it! I'm so out of touch! Although that particular programme is just one degree of separation from both Star Trek and Columbo, so that's good enough for me.

Protura

Image: David R. Maddison

"Protura" comes from the Greek for "first tail". Proturans get that name because they... don't have a tail at all. Right.

Diplura

Image: Michel Vuijlsteke

We're going back to the old school! Let's go out to the garden, turn over a stone and learn about a tiny arthropod that deserves at least a little bit of attention.

The Leggy Blonde Is So Weird!

Image: Paul Marek et al.
Illacme plenipes

Do you remember Illacme plenipes, that tiny, 3 cm (1.2 in) long millipede that, with its 750 legs, was the leggiest animal in all the world? Well, turns out it's weird in more ways than 750!

Springtail

Image: Tim Evison

BOING! No, really.

Giant Red-headed Centipede

Image: graftedno1 via Flickr

It's Scolopendra heros! Perhaps the most diabolically well dressed centipede in the world!

Illacme plenipes, leggiest of them all!

Illacme plenipes has more legs than any other animal! It's a millipede, of course. What else could it possibly be?

The strange thing is how tiny it is. We're talking scarcely more than 3 cm (1.2 in) long and about half a millimetre (0.2 in) wide. In this diminutive frame they pack some 750 legs!

Isn't that amazing? You'd think they'd have legs on their back, legs on their sides and legs on their legs... just pure legs everywhere! Instead it's a skinny but otherwise perfectly normal millipede. They just happen to be unbelievably leggy.

The females are, anyway. Males are somewhat less impressive, being half the length and struggling with a mere 300 or 400 legs. I guess a gentleman should never take the limelight.

Unfortunately, they don't actually have spotlights following everywhere they go. Neither are they weighed down by a shiny, gold medal around their minute neck. There's even a distinct lack of red carpets beneath their hundreds of feet. The wear and tear would be too great.

First discovered in 1926 in central California, these record breaking celebrities immediately took to the life of a recluse. They weren't rediscovered until 2005. They refused to be interviewed but consented to a brief photo shoot. Always leave your fans wanting more, right?