The fastest land animal is the cheetah and the largest land animal is the African elephant. Those facts are commonly known and elementary school children can often recite them to you in that rapid- fire wide-eyed way only they possess: but do you want to know a secret? Those kids don’t know everything and here is your chance to trump the precocious encyclopedia at your family’s Thanksgiving table this year with, “Yeah, well what’s the leggiest creature on the planet?”

The leggiest creature in the world is the millipede known as Ilacme plenipes. The rare creature was rediscovered in California seven years ago by Paul Marek, then a 28 year old scientist from East Carolina University.  He spotted it on a trip into an undisclosed oaken valley in San Benito County. Up until then Ilacme plenipes hadn’t been seen since Calvin Coolidge was in office.

In 2006 Marek published his findings about the Ilacme plenipes in the journal Nature.

"I practically fell over when I found it. It was extremely exhilarating," he told the Associated Press. Marek, now with the University of Arizona, must have wanted to revisit that elation because this month he published a redescription of the millipede in an issue of Zookeys.

Ilacme plenipes literally means "in highest fulfillment of feet" and the females can have up to 750 legs and males only have a maximum leg count of 562. Their many many feet allow the insects to burrow underground and cling to the sandstone boulders in the northwestern foothills of the Gabilan Range in San Benito County.

San Benito County is the only place where they are found: “This relict species is the only representative of its family in the Western Hemisphere. Its closest presumed relative, Nematozonium filum, lives in South Africa and this early relationship was established more than 200 million years ago when the continents coalesced in the landmass Pangaea," said Marek.

They have extremely long and narrow bodies, (females are slightly longer than males which makes sense seeing as females have more feet)  light cream in color, and they have a “hirsute vestiture, appearing velvety” which is the fancy way of saying they wear a hairy but soft coat. These body hairs can produce silk.

The millipedes have giant antennae, compared to the rest of its body, that they use to see and feel through the dark because they have no eyes. They don’t have grinding mouthparts for chewing which is a way they differ from other millipedes. Instead they have a mouth that is “rudimentary and fused into structures” that they use to pierce and suck plant or fungal tissues for sustenance: yet another fun fact suitable for dinner time conversation.