Here are some fascinating species that were discovered in recent years.

After the discovery was published in the Indian Journal of Arachnology, Ahmed messaged Rowling via Twitter to share the news .  She tweeted her congratulations and said she was honoured.

Swimming Centipede

The world’s only amphinious centipede, Scolopendra cataracta, was found in Thailand in 2017.  Entomologists say it is the first centipede that hunts on both land and water! It can reach 20 cm in length and is venomous like all of its kind. It glides under the water at night, looking for suitable prey.

Sorting Hat Spider

In 2017, Javed Ahment and two other researchers came upon a new spider species in the forests of Karnataka in the Western Ghats, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. The spider’s shape and colour bore an uncanny resemblance to the magical sorting hat that picks out the houses for Hogwarts students in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The hat belongs to Godric Gryffindor, so the spider was named Eriovixia gryffindon!

The researchers found only a single 7 mm long female of the noctumal orb-weaver species, so it is not known if the male sports a similar shape. The hat-shaped structure helps the brown coloured spider blend into the dead leaves where it makes its home.

DID YOU KNOWN

The swifts have the shortest bills, and among them, the glossy swiftlet has virtually no beak to speak of.