Newly found sea spider species breathes through legs, has boxing gloves for claws

Scientists have discovered a new species of sea spider with boxing glove-like claws. The spider with a strange yellow body colour was found off the Antarctica Ocean and has four near-black eyes and large bulbous claws. Scientists have discovered more than 1,000 species of sea spiders all over the world.

This unique and never-before-seen sea spider is called Austropallene halanychi, which is a distant relative to horseshoe crabs and arachnids. The sea spider also has a peculiar way ofeating in which it does not use its mouth but a straw-like proboscis to consume food. Another bizarre function found in the species was its way of respiration -it breathes through its legs.

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Newly found sea-spider species with strange features

The newfound species, Austropallene halanychi, was pulled from the ocean floor in the Ross Sea, about 1,870 feet (570 meters) below the surface.

In addition to all the other weird things about sea spiders, the new species has large claws that look like "boxing gloves," which it likely uses to grab hold of soft foods like anemones and worms, study co-author Andrew Mahon, a biologist at Central Michigan University, told Live Science. The study was published Nov. 28 in the journal ZooKeys.

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A. halanychi's body is about 0.4 inches (1 centimetre) long, but its legs stretch nearly 1.2 inches (3 cm). That gives the species the spindly look typical of many sea spiders.

What's interesting is that this newly-found sea spider species is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to undiscovered wildlife at the bottom of the Southern Ocean.

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"The benthic environment in Antarctica is an area of science that we need to keep exploring," Mahon said. "There's so much down there that every time we go, we find new things."

A. halanychi was first pulled up in 2013 by the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a USresearch vessel. Recently, Mahon and his colleague Jessica Zehnpfennig took it out of storage and identified it as a species new to science by analysing its body shape and genetics.

(With inputs from agencies)