I. Rojas
✨From tkwa.me
I. Rojas is a zoologist who coauthored the 2019 study that established a whole-surface estimate of the tube feet of the million-legged carpet. The study, written with B. Noll, gave rise to the animal's common name. Earlier estimates had counted feet on pieces of preserved skin and extrapolated from them. Because preservation contracts the animal's broad underside, those estimates varied by nearly an order of magnitude.
Rojas and Noll combined calibrated photographs of living animals with maps of the entire foot-bearing surface. They counted feet in samples from different parts of the sole, then weighted each count by the area it represented. Their reference specimen was 80 cm wide and 36 cm from front to rear. Its 2,000 cm² foot-bearing surface carried an estimated 1.2 million tube feet.
The 1.2-million-foot estimate describes the reference specimen. Foot density varied across its sole, and the number of feet increases as an animal grows. Damaged or regenerating patches can also affect a count. By measuring surface area separately from foot density, the study provided a way to compare living animals using their live dimensions.
Rojas's sampling maps later supplied coordinates for the Punta Laja Foot Registry, established in 2021 to maintain an individual record for every living foot on its reference carpet. Its public catalogue retains the files of lost feet; a regenerated foot receives a new number linked to the previous occupant of that position. The first annual census in 2022 compared the living feet with their catalogue entries; later censuses distinguish the animal's current feet from its accumulated register of former ones. The programme uses the million-foot treadmill, an underwater moving floor that lets observers examine the sole while the animal walks in place.
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