Why This Antarctic Spider's Legs Are Full of Holes — And It Needs Every One to Breathe
ObservationVault
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The giant Antarctic sea spider (Colossendeis megalonyx) has no lungs and no gills — it breathes entirely through thousands of microscopic pores in its leg exoskeleton, a structure scientists compare to Swiss cheese. The pattern is too regular to be damage. It's deliberate.
A 2018 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology first mapped how these pores scale with body size — solving a puzzle that should have kept this animal small. A follow-up study in 2019 tested how the same giants handle a warming Southern Ocean, with a result nobody on the research team expected.
Sources:
Lane, S., Shishido, C.M., Moran, A.L., Tobalske, B.W., & Woods, H.A. (2018), Journal of Experimental Biology — "Cuticular gas exchange by Antarctic sea spiders"
Shishido, C.M., Woods, H.A., et al. (2019), Proceedings of the Royal Society B — thermal performance scaling in Antarctic sea spiders
Chapters:
0:00 A leg that looks chewed through
0:47 Why nothing this big should breathe through its skin
1:38 The exoskeleton that shouldn't work
2:28 Two problems, one structure
3:28 The math that should have stopped this spider growing
4:38 A test built to break them
5:52 What one leg says about a whole ecosystem
7:27 The number nobody has published yet
🌊 The deep sea keeps secrets no submarine has ever fully mapped. Subscribe for free and never miss what surfaces next: @observationvault
#SeaSpider #AntarcticWildlife #OceanMysteries
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Why This Antarctic Spider's Legs Are Full of Holes — And It Needs Every One to Breathe
ObservationVault
161 views
The giant Antarctic sea spider (Colossendeis megalonyx) has no lungs and no gills — it breathes entirely through thousands of microscopic pores in its leg exoskeleton, a structure scientists compare to Swiss cheese. The pattern is too regular to be damage. It's deliberate.
A 2018 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology first mapped how these pores scale with body size — solving a puzzle that should have kept this animal small. A follow-up study in 2019 tested how the same giants handle a warming Southern Ocean, with a result nobody on the research team expected.
Sources:
Lane, S., Shishido, C.M., Moran, A.L., Tobalske, B.W., & Woods, H.A. (2018), Journal of Experimental Biology — "Cuticular gas exchange by Antarctic sea spiders"
Shishido, C.M., Woods, H.A., et al. (2019), Proceedings of the Royal Society B — thermal performance scaling in Antarctic sea spiders
Chapters:
0:00 A leg that looks chewed through
0:47 Why nothing this big should breathe through its skin
1:38 The exoskeleton that shouldn't work
2:28 Two problems, one structure
3:28 The math that should have stopped this spider growing
4:38 A test built to break them
5:52 What one leg says about a whole ecosystem
7:27 The number nobody has published yet
🌊 The deep sea keeps secrets no submarine has ever fully mapped. Subscribe for free and never miss what surfaces next: @observationvault
#SeaSpider #AntarcticWildlife #OceanMysteries