You would be surprised at how much sea spiders are capable of. According to a study published on Monday, marine spiders may recover body parts that have been cut in addition to limbs.
Gerhard Scholtz, senior author of the study and professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, said, ‘Nobody had expected this,’ adding that the study is the first of its type and will spur additional study in the area.
The ability of different kinds of arthropods, including spiders, centipedes, and other insects, to regrow limbs after amputation has received enough documentation. However, even the study’s author was surprised to learn that an entire body part could develop.
The experiments were done on tiny eight-legged sea spiders where the researchers amputated hind limbs and posterior parts of 23 immature and adult sea spiders.
Monitoring the results, the researchers found out different results for adult and juvenile spiders. In the adult spiders, there was no regeneration of the amputated body parts however it was not the same for juvenile spiders.
Juvenile spiders, on the other hand, were able to regrow either completely or near-complete their amputated body parts.
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