'Twerking' tarantula species named after author Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Things couldn't get much stranger in Macondo even if they tried.

Magical realist author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has just posthumously lent his name to a newly-discovered tarantula species that boasts an unusual defense mechanism: it uses its butt to fight off enemies.

The tarantula was discovered near Garcia Marquez's home town and, in an unusual posthumous honor, the spider has been named for the late Nobel literature laureate, officials said Tuesday.

Scary but non-aggressive

The newly researched Kankuamos marquezi is named for both Garcia Marquez and the indigenous Kankuamo group who live in the area of Caribbean Colombia where the writer was born.

The possibly scary looking but non-aggressive spider's body is three centimeters long with legs the same length giving an overall size of nine centimeters (3.5 inches).

A group of Uruguayan and Colombian scientists, led by Carlos Perefan from the University of the Republic of Uruguay and the study's lead author, found the species in the upper area of a mountain 2,200 meters high, in a rainy, cold environment.

Twerking for dear life

The newly high-profile arachnid has a defense mechanism that includes releasing stinging hairs that dig into predators' eyes and people's skin.

But unlike most other tarantulas, which defend themselves by flicking these hairs onto their opponents, K. marquezi is one of only six tarantula species known to use its hairy abdomen itself as a weapon.

In other words, it "twerks" in self-defense.

"They literally fight with their butts," said Popular Science's Meaghan Lee Callaghan.

"Most tarantulas attack by scraping their rear-ends ?with their legs? to release barbed hairs, which they fling at opponents. But Kankuamo marquezi and its counterparts slam their whole rears against their rivals, releasing the hairs on contact," she explained.

Master of magical realism

Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca near Colombia's northern coast and started out as a journalist in Cartagena. He was widely seen as the master of magical realism.

The author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," died at the age of 87 on April 17, 2014 in Mexico, where he lived with his wife Mercedes Barcha.

Hailed for helping put Latin America on the literary map, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

K. marquezi was officially described in a paper published on ZooKeys. — With a report from Agence France-Presse/TJ Dimacali, GMA News