A gonzo arachnid that has a dog - like head has been snapped in a series of photo that shows just how wild and wonderful our instinctive world is .
Shared onTwitterby science writer Ferris Jabr , the images were take by scientist and photographer Andreas Kay ( you could control out his Flickr Sir Frederick Handley Page with other wonderful creatureshere ) . The animal is an arachnid , not a spider , called the bunny Phalangium opilio , and scientifically namedMetagryne bicolumnata .
The figure of speech were snap in Ecuador in July 2017 . The creature is midget , with its body hardly the size of a human thumbnail , but it ’s immediately noticeable for its odd school principal that looks weirdly like a dog or a bunny rabbit ( or if you ’re nerds like us , a certain black dog fromHarry Potter)and perfect with ears , eye , and a nose .
And in a video post about the animal on the websiteRumble , Kay revealed some more detail about the creature . He say the animate being get from theCosmetidaefamily , in the ordering ofOpiliones . These are also known as harvestmen or , more commonly , daddy longlegs .
“ wayward to a common impression Harvestman [ sic ] do not have malice glands and are absolutely harmless , ” he compose . “ Harvestmen have been around for at least 400 million years and lived even before the dinosaurs . ”
While you might reckon this is a wanderer , such a moniker is incorrect according to Kay . This belongs to the same category asArachnida , but is not closely related to spiders . It was first described in 1959 by German arachnid specializer Carl Friedrich Roewer .
It ’s unclear what purpose the eye topographic point and ear - like protrusions have , but they may be there to make the puppet count bigger to marauder . The literal eyes of the animal are locate either side of the eye spot .
Yeah , it ’s extremely outlandish . And if this animal has ignited a desire to discover more about eight - legged booster that depend like other animals – for some ground – then we ’ve got you cross . In January this year , scientist described 18 novel species ofpelican spidersthat , you guessed it , look just like pelican .
What ’s next , an arachnid that looks like an elephant ? An ant that looks like a monkey ? Or perhaps a wasp that looks like a human ? Only meter will tell . For now , all come our new dog - arachnoid overlords .
