# which is hands down the biggest centipede?



## driver (Aug 4, 2007)

I see these big reddish brown looking asian centipedes, which gets to be the biggest? Are there any centipedes that come up close on the one foot mark?


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## Ted (Aug 4, 2007)

driver said:


> I see these big reddish brown looking asian centipedes, which gets to be the biggest? Are there any centipedes that come up close on the one foot mark?


scolopendra giganticus[sp] gets the biggest that i know of.
viridicornus, subsnipes are pretty big, too.


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## Drachenjager (Aug 4, 2007)

driver said:


> I see these big reddish brown looking asian centipedes, which gets to be the biggest? Are there any centipedes that come up close on the one foot mark?


i know for a fact taht at least one S. heros castaniceps busted 9" and i have seen many that i believe were over teh 12" mark. 
But the answer is noone knows. 
The larger shc seem to be in the cracks and crevices in the bedrock, I believe that if you were able to go deeper into the pores of th ebedrock you would find larger specimens than we have seen before. I dont know about the habitats of the other species


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## Stylopidae (Aug 4, 2007)

Scolopendra gigantea is officially recognized by the guiness book of world records, but I'm with Drachenjager on this one. Scolopendra heros can get pretty big. Two in my personal collection top 7 inches and I'm pretty sure one of mine is 8.

They grow throughout their lives and nobody really knows how long they can live. The top is thought to be 9", but galapoheros found one that's 10" and says he has a reliable report of one that's well over a foot.

We shall see.

Two half gallon jars placed side by side for a size reference:


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## Ted (Aug 4, 2007)

the one pictured here is a heros ?


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## sick4x4 (Aug 5, 2007)

i think the asians take the crown for the biggest..Chris from krazy8's had an 11"plus pede, i forget what species it was though but i belive it was asian????? S. heros castaneiceps is the contender here in the states but from what i have been told by breeders is that getting to the 10" is kinda unrealistic......


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## Galapoheros (Aug 5, 2007)

I feel like the big s. heros are in the cracks in the bedrock too, not under the smaller rocks you can look under while walking around.  With the deep cracks, I just don't see why the big ones would go above the bedrock cracks along the river and creek sides to dig under a rock.  But just speculating.  The big one I had measured 9 to 10 inches.  While it was walking around, I took a shot of it along a tape measure and was 9.5 inches.  I measured it at rest and was a solid 10 inches.  Here's that pic I like to flash of it.  Too bad I let it get out.  Somebody else found it here in Austin.  I had to trade allot of stuff for it.  It was big, but this pic really makes it look bigger than it may have looked to people if they had seen it with their own eyes.  I've got an old pic of me holding it bare handed.  It looks big in that pic too, but not as big.  Most of y'all have prob seen this pic but here it is again.  Somebody had a pede that I think broke 12 inches here on the AB but it died and they only had the skin I think or they put it in the freezer and was falling apart.  They had trouble preserving it.  I think it turned out to be S. galapagoensis going by a "medial ridge???" on the last tergite.  I can't remember what that feature is called but it is something like that.  It was either a galapagoensis or a gigantea.  Here's the biggest heros I've seen or had.  It's eating a Sphinx moth in the pic.  My senses tell me that the size is genetic and the really big ones like this are hard to come by.


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## Ted (Aug 5, 2007)

Galapoheros said:


> so the heros arent found here in texas are they?


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## Galapoheros (Aug 5, 2007)

Yeah, you should be able to find them around where you are.  I'd go to lakes there where there is bedrock around.

OK, something's been keeping me from posting this but, just to show it's size better, here's an old pic of me holding it while I was keeping it preoccupied with a meal.  I don't do this anymore and I wouldn't try it unless you are willing to take the risk.  I've been playing with these off and on since the mid eighties and thought I could always get away with it but after I got bit by a bigger one, I'm not interested in holding them anymore.  I could really feel the weight of this pede.


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## sick4x4 (Aug 5, 2007)

haha i remember that pic, wow and im still in aw lol....i'm also wondering how diet effects size??? inverts and herps added to a pedes diet help increase the potential of it getting huge in size, verses those feed just crix and roaches


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## Ted (Aug 5, 2007)

Galapoheros said:


> Yeah, you should be able to find them around where you are.  I'd go to lakes there where there is bedrock around.
> 
> OK, something's been keeping me from posting this but, just to show it's size better, here's an old pic of me holding it while I was keeping it preoccupied with a meal.  I don't do this anymore and I wouldn't try it unless you are willing to take the risk.  I've been playing with these off and on since the mid eighties and thought I could always get away with it but after I got bit by a bigger one, I'm not interested in holding them anymore.  I could really feel the weight of this pede.


incredible.:clap: :worship:


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## mindlessvw (Aug 5, 2007)

effin' soldier!!! way to wrangle that critter...lol


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## GQ. (Aug 5, 2007)

Jeez Galapoheros!  That is a monster!  Does anyone have a photo of that pede, (S. gigantea?), that Russ Gurley had at his table during Arachnocon 2006?  I don't know how big that pede was, but it was in the neighborhood of ginormous.


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## Galapoheros (Aug 5, 2007)

mindlessvw said:


> effin' soldier!!! way to wrangle that critter...lol


Ha! ..."soldier" , get out   More like "idiot!"


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## Crotalus (Aug 5, 2007)

Big but not close to some gigantea I have seen. They were massive


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## Drachenjager (Aug 5, 2007)

Crotalus said:


> Big but not close to some gigantea I have seen. They were massive


thats the largest one i have seen in captivity, BUT i have seen some at my moms lake house in the cracks in the bedrock that were at least 12" and there was a fishing rod laying next to them. they were mating, and i wish i had a way to have gotten them out of the cracks. 
they went from the reel to past the first eye on the rod and i measured that at just over 14" these things wer HUGE... as i said, they werent ON the rod but it was laying infront of the crack they were in, so the measurment could be a couple inches off. 
My wife was sitting in a big crack near anothe rhill country lake and jsut about jumped out of it when she saw one that was longer than length of her forearm from the heel of her hand to the elbow. it crawled right past her arm ...
I couldnt find it when i got up there. The crack was like a cave but narrowed the farther back it went into nothing more than a crack and it went back in there. 
So like i said, noone knows. The ones that live where you can get to them like in the rain forests will be easier to find the really huge ones ..I doubt you will ever have a  SHC in captivity that is as big as they can get because of husbandry issues...so dont discount very large pedes in Texas... After all i have a male A. anax that is pushing a 7" legspan


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