Giant Centipede Handling

[Steven]

do u pick stuff up like that a lot?

no, i usually don't handle any of my scolopendrids

just wanted to try out that technique,...
but it's def. NOT efficient

 

[CedrikG]

What are the words already ...

Oh yeah ... Oh my god ! :clap:

With the angle on the second pic it looks like a 18-20 inch centipede ! haha

 

[cacoseraph]

two things (2/23/06)


1) Centipede Game #1
i invented the most awesome centipede game. i have to make a vid of it. i had my trusty bluering (Ethmostigmus trigonopodus), Smith, out and about on my hands. i looked at roach motel. I looked at Smith.... i knew what i must do!

I took a little hisser nymph, about ~3/4" (2cm) put it on the same hand as Smith. The hisser ran up my hand directly towards Smith, who promptly knocked it off my hand. Drat. Try again... and again... long story short, i ended up actually having to pinch the hisser while Smith grabbed it!

I'm telling you Smith is a sweetheart! I think it's a he, but i'm not sure.

Smith at work again:

yellowleg update:
edit: wow, four or five days after the fact 3 of my bites look like they are going VERY SLIGHTLY necrotic/cytolysic! how completely awesome! the only other time i had a necrotic reaction was to a Cheiracanthum mildei (yellow sac spider at any rate) bite!!! i'm very excited! 5 of the puncture wounds have turned into very small (1-2mm) open wounds, extending down into a few layers of my skin. they appear to have gotten larger since yesterday which leads me to believe there is a cytotoxic effect going on!

pretty sure not necrotoxic.... roughly a month later and there is virtually no evidence of any of the bites. oh well, i guess it is a good thing =P

 

[cacoseraph]

polyMOR(E)pha pics

i caught this little fellow March 28, 2006 in the Wastelands, Rialto, California, USA at night in the rain.

my hands were so cold i couldn't make them work very well, so i imagine i kinda applied some unfriendly pressure to the pede... still didn't bite me

it's name is bloodfoot for the horrendous blood filled blister i got whilst hiking my stupid buttocks all over Rialto... in the rain... at night =P

i'm working on being able to take pictures that make the centipedes look larger and more impressive. i think a key to that is taking shots "down the barrel" so to speak... so that the closer end of the centipede is in focus but the farther end is blurry... i hope this will give the illusion of greater length

this centipede is about 3" long... i think having it on my hand breaks the illusion cuz it gives too well known a reference.

all pictures taken with a RAZR cellphone and no magnifying glass

p.s. this has to be close to the 60th poly i've literally hand caught... no bites while catching yet

p.p.s why i call him bloodfoot:

 

[dirtborder4life]

pede

congrats on the new pede.Bad blister,but i guess you got a reward for your pain and suffering!

 

[Buggin]

Note to self:Never handle a Centipede.

 

[cacoseraph]

Note to self:Never handle a Centipede.

it's 2kool not too! i reckon i'm getting close to 2000 um, handling experiences and i've only been accidentily bitten maybe 5-6 times

the funny thing is i think i'm getting close to being the foremost authority on centipede handling solely by virtue of doing it more than anyone else... but ppl who hardly have handled anything still see fit to tell me i'm doing something like, wrong.

ppl still see them as monsters, but hopefully after years of my antics a few ppl will perhaps listen to the only actual evidence being presented beyond "common knowledge"

oh well.

oh, and the semirant part of my post wasn't directed at Buggin in the least

 

[Voracious]

it's 2kool not too! i reckon i'm getting close to 2000 um, handling experiences and i've only been accidentily bitten maybe 5-6 times

the funny thing is i think i'm getting close to being the foremost authority on centipede handling solely by virtue of doing it more than anyone else... but ppl who hardly have handled anything still see fit to tell me i'm doing something like, wrong.

ppl still see them as monsters, but hopefully after years of my antics a few ppl will perhaps listen to the only actual evidence being presented beyond "common knowledge"

oh well.

oh, and the semirant part of my post wasn't directed at Buggin in the least

Caco,

Wanted to chime in here. I've always had a healthy respect for these reclusive creatures. The first time I ever saw one in real life was a 3" lithobiidae ssp. seen while cleaning construction debris. I was 14. It ran out of the wood pile. Provoked by my cousin kicking at it, it become extremely agitated, and attacked the first living thing it encountered - a hapless slug - drawing blood. I'd never seen a "bug" show such angry expression. Since, I've held these creatures in a sort of morbid curiosity, and probably speak for many reading these threads. Call it irrational fear if you will: to this day I will not handle even a small centipede (lithobiidae ssp.) that I find under a rotting piece of wood.

I won't render an opinion on a recommendation for or against handling (I sure won't ever touch one), but you are to be commended for overcoming the fears we all have of the unknown and demonstrating a noticeable difference in temperaments at least among individuals, and possibly along subspecial lines. For example, one may infer, perhaps correctly and perhaps not, that the bluering is less aggressive than s. subspinipes.

Unlike the silkworm or the termite, these bizarre creatures have little to no known economic impact and are therefore little studied. Your work has provided some nuance about these fearsome creatures, and I believe your claim about approaching status as the foremost authority is quite defensible, at least amongst the online community.

Prov. 27:2

 

[cacoseraph]

Caco,

Wanted to chime in here. I've always had a healthy respect for these reclusive creatures. The first time I ever saw one in real life was a 3" lithobiidae ssp. seen while cleaning construction debris. I was 14. It ran out of the wood pile. Provoked by my cousin kicking at it, it become extremely agitated, and attacked the first living thing it encountered - a hapless slug - drawing blood. I'd never seen a "bug" show such angry expression. Since, I've held these creatures in a sort of morbid curiosity, and probably speak for many reading these threads. Call it irrational fear if you will: to this day I will not handle even a small centipede (lithobiidae ssp.) that I find under a rotting piece of wood.

I won't render an opinion on a recommendation for or against handling (I sure won't ever touch one), but you are to be commended for overcoming the fears we all have of the unknown and demonstrating a noticeable difference in temperaments at least among individuals, and possibly along subspecial lines. For example, one may infer, perhaps correctly and perhaps not, that the bluering is less aggressive than s. subspinipes.

Unlike the silkworm or the termite, these bizarre creatures have little to no known economic impact and are therefore little studied. Your work has provided some nuance about these fearsome creatures, and I believe your claim about approaching status as the foremost authority is quite defensible, at least amongst the online community.

Prov. 27:2

thanks
i really just want ppl to know these guys are like taras and scorps. some species are angry, some are nice... some will ruin your weekend if they bite you and some you can't notice hardly at all

further adventures in centipeding:
i was feeding the troops and saw my largest Egyptian Emerald centipede, by the name of Esmerelda Villa Lobos, on top of her substrate. so i did what is becoming my standard method of initiating free handling with "nice" centipedes... i just opened her(the name and fem pronouns are wishful thinking at this point) little container up quickly and grabbed her. she was a little too quick and got her head underground before i could scoop under her completely so i did a BIG no-no and tugged on her.

she just more vigorously tried to get into her burrow system!

and she is BIG for an EEC... maybe 4"BL so it's not like she's a little pling scared of the world. she's a big EEC, scared of the world hehehehe

here is a pic of an EEC... i traded this one away, but it gives you an idea of how danged pretty these are.

zoom

 

[Voracious]

Colors

One thing about these animals is they are beautiful - in the sense that a precious stone is beautiful. Every color of the rainbow is represented somewhere in some suspecies - reds, browns, blues, yellows, oranges, and I've even seen peach with green legs.

Despite my healthy respect and fear of these invertabrates (given my first impression, cut me a little slack!), I believe I too will someday keep these - but in the (unused) horse shed, just to look at, feed, and show to friends.

Wives, houses, and centipedes don't mix - and most certainly not young children.

Again, thanks for all your research. I believe, having studied these things myself, that you have already uncovered much that has never been known. You really should contact an entymology dept. at a university with your findings.

 

[cacoseraph]

here are more pics of Mortal Sin

these are all made with a RAZR cellphone camera

i got a better measuring pic... but the camera erased it cuz i ran out of space... standing still relaxed Mortal Sin is 6"BL (15cm) and it gets a little longer when locked straight to run, probably right about 7"bodylength (17.5cm)... it is one BIG S. polymorpha!

 

[Voracious]

What a sweet little pede! How much warning do you get if they are about to attack - assuming the pede has been safely extracted from its quarters and is crawling around on you?

Showed a friend your videos today of the black pede (Smith?) eating the mouse. Very impressive, esp. how quickly these animals can fling their heads around.

The S. Gigantea doing same is also impressive but not nearly as dramatic.

 

[cacoseraph]

What a sweet little pede! How much warning do you get if they are about to attack - assuming the pede has been safely extracted from its quarters and is crawling around on you?

Showed a friend your videos today of the black pede (Smith?) eating the mouse. Very impressive, esp. how quickly these animals can fling their heads around.

The S. Gigantea doing same is also impressive but not nearly as dramatic.

oh, those mouse feeding vids aren't mine.
i don'th have gigantea/robusta (=reddish one) and viridicornis(=blackish one)... though i'd be willing to trade one of my kidneys for them =P

i would probably only feed a pinky to a centipede... but to be honest the only time i bought one to feed my G. rosea that i bred.... i wimped out and tried to keep them mouse as a pet. stupid thing died anyways.

i'm kind of wimpy

edit:

oh, and how do i know if they are going to bite me... i don't, not really. everytime i have gotten bit on accident it was a suprise (i.e. the pede was just walking around and "randomly" bit me).

i used to think when the centipede started bouncing it's head and waving it's antenna really fast it was getting agitated. now i think that is a way for them to gather more data. we humans have depth perception because our eyes are a couple of inchces apart and each one sees a slightly different picture. from the differences in each picture our brain can math out depth (kinda like triangulating). i suspect the centipedes can do something similar with their antenna.

this is why they do the bounce/waving thing when they are hunting... trying to draw in as much sensor data as possible to find the prey.

when they started bouncing like that i used to put them away and be all scared... but now i just let them do what they want and i haven't gotten bit yet.

it's actually funny, most of the time a cent is on me it just sits still and cleans it's antenna

 

[GATORGAR56K]

i decided that id try handling my tanzanian blue-ring and i wasnt disappointed with it at all

everything you said about these guys was very true caco, this particular one wasnt aggressive at all and i even grabbed him and picked him up without any sort of defensive reaction whatsoever. the only time it got aggressive was when i dug it up, it got pissed off and struck at me, but it calmed down rather quickly

 

[cacoseraph]

i decided that id try handling my tanzanian blue-ring and i wasnt disappointed with it at all




everything you said about these guys was very true caco, this particular one wasnt aggressive at all and i even grabbed him and picked him up without any sort of defensive reaction whatsoever. the only time it got aggressive was when i dug it up, it got pissed off and struck at me, but it calmed down rather quickly

that is excellent man!

i should have mentioned, mine will tail grab me when i root them out of their container. i used to free handle all my centipedes out by first hands-OFF removing them into a large bin/container with about 1" of substrate in it. from there i would sort of "snakehook" them onto a large paint brush and then place the centipede on my hand.

the advantages to this method are that if the cent repeatedly strikes at the paintbrush it gives you time to reconsider holding it (which i've done a few times, for sure!). also, it seems like there is less of a chance of the centipede registering you as a hostile, which is always a good thing

excellent pics man!

my record for holding Smith (my fav blueringer, whom i love...we might get married one day) is about 60-70 minutes... we was running around on my fingers and hands while i was typing on the internet.

a like, side note: the smaller speciemen i have seems more like, nervous to me. they run quicker and seem to try to get away more vigorously when i'm grabbing them from their container.

i wish i had more of these guys to see if that is a trend or my small guy just happens to be nervous

 

[GATORGAR56K]

yeah, i dont think id consider mine small, i got him (or her, i refer to it as a he) from krazy8's, and its about 4 inches, these max out at 6 inches i believe? im not sure though, and it did grab me with its terminators like you refered to, the last time it did it, it hurt a little, i think when it strikes at my hand, theyre mock strikes, cuz i have yet to have him actually grab me with his fangs, even though he definitely had the opportunity

 

[demicheru]

E. Trigonopodus (Caco's Smith) and Egyptian Emerald

Well, I was at my brother's (Cacoseraph's) apt last nite, and we got into the bugs, after an unsuccessful attempt at resurrecting an A. versicolor who died in an apparently troublesome molt. Anyway, we got into the mischief of taking pics of handling. After probably at least half an hour of handling centi's and "unhandleable" t's, no one was bit, and a couple pretty good pics were snapped.

Here's the centi pics that turned out -

A few of the Egyptian Emerald -

And a few of Smith -

And the final one, Smith on my face. This was taken after Smith was a real nice guy about the whole affair of being pulled out of the container and handled for 5-10min while being photographed. Not entirely sure why I was giggling like that in the pic, but oh well

 

[demicheru]

Alipes sp.

I almost forgot I had this one too - another pede from Caco.

I've got the second one as my wallpaper on my work computer, very visible to anyone walking in the hallway, and I get a LOT of questions about it. For some reason, the majority of the questions are along the lines of "is that really your hand?" I point out the wedding ring as proof, and most of them just walk away at that point. I am now the designated bug catcher for anything that gets in the building. I love my job.

 

[cacoseraph]

I almost forgot I had this one too - another pede from Caco.


I've got the second one as my wallpaper on my work computer, very visible to anyone walking in the hallway, and I get a LOT of questions about it. For some reason, the majority of the questions are along the lines of "is that really your hand?" I point out the wedding ring as proof, and most of them just walk away at that point. I am now the designated bug catcher for anything that gets in the building. I love my job.

This is my brother, whom i love, and with am well pleased

HEY! i'm my buildings official bug catcher too! what are the odds!?

 

[CopperInMyVeins]

These latest pictures really make me want to get an Ethmostigmus trigonopodus, since I definitely can't do that kind of thing with my current centipede.