A blue tarantula, a sneezing monkey and the Spongebob Squarepants mushroom - meet some of the amazing new species discovered this year

Among other discoveries are an orchid that only blooms at night, a parasitic wasp and tiny worm that lives almost a mile underground

A blue Sazima's Tarantula (Pterinopelma sazimai)

It’s an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare: this huge, hairy, bright blue spider has been recently discovered by scientists.
Thankfully, unless you live among the tabletop mountains of eastern Brazil, you’re unlikely to find the Sazima’s tarantula scurrying across your bathtub.
The scarily hairy tarantula is on a list of the top 10 "bizarre and unusual" new species discovered in the last year.
Also on the list, chosen by a committee of leading scientists, is a sneezing monkey, a mushroom named after Spongebob Squarepants and an orchid that only blooms at night.
A venomous jellyfish, giant millipede, parasitic wasp and a tiny worm that lives almost a mile underground are also among the top 10, chosen from among 200 nominated animals and plants described for the first time last year.

Spongebob Squarepants Mushroom (Spongiforma squarepantsii)

Sneezing Monkey (Rhinopithecus strykeri)

Devil's Worm (Halicephalobus mephisto)

Box Jelly (Tamoya ohboya)

The "sneezing monkey", Rhinopithecus strykeri, was found by scientists conducting a gibbon survey in the high mountains of Burma.
The critically endangered snub-nosed monkey has a distinctive white beard and sneezes when it rains.
Also on the list is the Bonaire banded box jelly, a colourful and venomous jellyfish found near the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire.
Its scientific name, Tamoya ohboya, was chosen because of an assumption that anyone stung by the creature is likely to exclaim "oh boy!".
The night-blooming orchid, named Bulbophyllum nocturnum, by scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, was discovered in Papua New Guinea. Its flowers open at around 10pm and close early the next morning.
The Devil's worm is one of the weirdest new critters. Measuring just half a millimetre, it was found at a depth of 1.3 kilometres, or 0.8 of a mile, in a South African gold mine where temperatures reach 37C.
The worm is the deepest living multicellular terrestrial organism on Earth. It was named Halicephalobus mephisto after mestopheles, the demon in the Faust legend.

A giant Millipede (Crurifarcimen vagans)

Night-blooming Orchid (Bulbophyllum nocturnum)

Nepalese poppy (Meconopsis autumnalis)

Walking Cactus

A small attack wasp (Kollasmosoma sentum)

The list is published each year by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University in the US.
A committee of international scientists made the selection based on "bizarre and unusual" traits that make certain species stand out.
The list commemorates the birth on May 23 1707 of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised the modern system of animal and plant classification.
"The top 10 is intended to bring attention to the biodiversity crisis and the unsung species explorers and museums who continue a 250-year tradition of discovering and describing the millions of kinds of plants, animals and microbes with whom we share this planet," said institute director Professor Quentin Wheeler.
"The more species we discover, the more amazing the biosphere proves to be, and the better prepared we are to face whatever environmental challenges lie ahead."
Prof Wheeler added: "Each species provides a unique chapter in the history of life and unless we discover them now, we stand to lose an enormous amount of irreplaceable evidence about our own origins and relatives."