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  • 2022-06-13 (xsd:date)
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  • Do Centipedes Actually Have 100 Legs? (en)
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  • The name centipede implies that this creature has exactly 100 legs, but the truth is more complicated than that. In reality, centipedes can have a widely varying number of legs that is never found to be exactly 100 in number. The misconception grew from the Latin root of the name, which combines centum, meaning hundred, and pes or ped, meaning foot. The misconception is frequently challenged online, for example in a Reddit post that pulled from Wikipedia the claim that ​​no species of centipede has exactly 100 legs. This is correct. According to the National Park Service, Despite centi in their name, which implies 100 legs, centipedes can have fewer than 20 legs to more than 300 legs, but they always have an odd number of pairs of legs. Centipedes’ bodies are made up of individual segments, with only one pair of legs per segment. They are arthropods, which means they have a non-living exoskeleton. Studies and reports have concluded that the number of leg pairs is always odd, making it impossible for any given centipede to actually have exactly 100 legs. According to the Australian Museum in Sydney, for example, the name centipede is a misnomer because the number of pairs of legs in centipedes is always an odd number and the known range is between 15 and 191 pairs. A 2017 report in the National Library of Medicine stated: Another report published in 2004 by University of Cambridge developmental biologists in Cell Press and as reported in Science Direct argues the same: The report also states a possible reason for why the number of leg pairs are odd in the first place (emphasis ours), pointing out that one segment of the centipede's body carry modified legs that serve as poison claws: According to the Encyclopedia of Toxicology (emphasis ours): Given that all studied centipedes have an odd number of leg pairs, there has been no discovery of a centipede with exactly 100 legs. We can conclude that no centipedes actually have 100 legs, and their actual leg numbers vary widely. (en)
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