This newfound blind cave eel has no need for eyes in its underground habitat, a trait shared by most of the new subterranean creatures recently discovered in Australia.
At 16 inches (40 centimeters) long, the rare eel--found in aquifers along the Cape Range mountains (see map)--is the longest underground species known in Australia, researchers said.
This newfound, 0.1-inch-long (3-millimeter-long) juvenile plant hopper in the Hemipteran genus feeds on sap from underground plant roots.
During a recent four-year survey of Australia's subterranean critters, researchers endured 105-degree-Fahrenheit (40-degree-Celsius) heat, monitor lizards and brown snakes cozying up to research sites, and hydrogen sulfide gas venting from sinkholes, team member Steve Cooper, of the South Australian Museum, said in October 2009.
Clasping a woodlouse leg, this unnamed species of blind pseudoscorpion was discovered living in the air spaces above groundwater in aquifers.
The 0.1-inch-long (3-millimeter-long) animal is one of many of the scorpion-like arachnids found during a recent scientific survey, which identified just a fifth of the as-yet unknown species believed to exist in Australia's underground, scientists say.
