{"id":385512,"date":"2026-01-03T13:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T13:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/385512\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T13:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T13:38:20","slug":"scientists-solve-140-year-mystery-of-how-antarctic-sea-spiders-the-largest-in-the-world-make-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/385512\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Solve 140-Year Mystery Of How Antarctic Sea Spiders \u2013 The Largest In The World \u2013 Make Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 140 years, a leggy mystery has eluded scientists working in Antarctica. Here, you\u2019ll find enormous sea spiders<\/a> that are a great example of something called \u201cpolar gigantism<\/a>\u201d, a phenomenon where animals get supersized in cold environments compared to their warmer relatives. Weird thing is, despite their enormous size, nobody knew where they came from.<\/p>\n

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The mystery of Antarctic sea spider (Colossendeis megalonyx<\/a>) reproduction has now been solved thanks to a team of University of\u00a0Hawai\u02bbi\u00a0at M\u0101noa scientists working at a remote research station. They were able to collect several sea spiders by hand and transported them to observation tanks. Doing so enabled them to see Antarctic sea spider eggs for the first time, and it revealed a curious difference compared to other sea spider species.<\/p>\n

While most sea spiders will carry their eggs until they\u2019re ready to hatch, Antarctic sea spiders attach their eggs to the rocky seabed. These then develop over several months, and they\u2019re really hard to see.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the eggs become overgrown with a kind of microscopic algae that perfectly camouflages them. It\u2019s so effective that the researchers say they could hardly see the eggs in the observation tanks even though they knew they were there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were so lucky to be able to see this,\u201d said PhD student Aaron Toh in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThe opportunity to work directly with these amazing animals in Antarctica meant we could learn things no one had ever even guessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery ends a 140-year mystery as to how these sea spiders reproduce and suggests they could be a valuable research subject for investigating how paternal care evolved in sea spiders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese giant sea spiders, the males do care for the young, but they do it differently and they do it in a much simpler way than the other sea spiders,\u201d said Amy Moran, UH M\u0101noa School of Life Sciences professor. \u201cSo it may provide a kind of a look at the evolutionary bridge that leads to fathers taking care of their offspring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study is published in the journal Ecology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 140 years, a leggy mystery has eluded scientists working in Antarctica. Here, you\u2019ll find enormous sea spiders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-385512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}