# S. "gigantea robusta" cannibalistic offspring...



## El Johano (Jul 14, 2005)

One month ago I discovered that one of my Scolopendra sp. "gigantea robusta" from Ecuador had a clutch of eggs. To minimize the disturbance I left her alone until today. 
Since S. "gigantea" plings are known to eat the mother after birth I was hoping to separate them before they started to get hungry  But at the same time I didn't want to disturb her too early as she might eat the eggs...
I was too late, found this today:






Fat little buggers, stomach full of mum   






Closer






Fangs






Fortunately I have 2 more big ones, one of which also have eggs, must be the season...


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## Randolph XX() (Jul 14, 2005)

Don't eat ur mama, u can take a chunk of me, pedelings!!!!


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## Gsc (Jul 14, 2005)

Good and bad I guess.... you lost the mom, but a majority of the peedlings made it (without her eating the eggs...) now you have a ton of CB babies that you can sell/trade and be able to buy a few more adults....  I still consider you extremely lucky!


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## El Johano (Jul 14, 2005)

Gsc said:
			
		

> Good and bad I guess.... you lost the mom, but a majority of the peedlings made it (without her eating the eggs...) now you have a ton of CB babies that you can sell/trade and be able to buy a few more adults....  I still consider you extremely lucky!


Yes, it is certainly better than no plings at all, ~40 plings is better then one adult


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## warry (Jul 14, 2005)

great news not for the mum though!


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## Black Hawk (Jul 14, 2005)

tough love


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## Steven (Jul 15, 2005)

DAMN   those plings look ugly   



just kidding,... good job Johan, :clap: sorry about the mother   
i've got 2 females on eggs at the moment,... i'll keep an eye when they reach 2nd instar to seperate them,.. would hate to loose 2 Gig.robusta's !


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## aftershock (Jul 15, 2005)

I agree with Steven, they do look ugly..


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## Cooper (Jul 15, 2005)

If ugly means fat, I agree.


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## danread (Jul 15, 2005)

Steven said:
			
		

> DAMN   those plings look ugly
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I've got one female on eggs too. She has gone straight on to the top shelf in my room with a blanket over the tank. I'm not even going to look for another few weeks, i dont want to loose this one. 

The pedelings in the pictures look like protonymphs. I didnt realise they fed that that stage?


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## Steven (Jul 15, 2005)

danread said:
			
		

> The pedelings in the pictures look like protonymphs. I didnt realise they fed that that stage?


same here, i also thought they only started feeding after 2nd skin orso :?


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## El Johano (Jul 15, 2005)

Steven said:
			
		

> DAMN   those plings look ugly


I agree, they look disgusting, sort of like maggots  ;P 



			
				Steven said:
			
		

> same here, I also thought they only started feeding after 2nd skin orso :?


Me too, thats why I didn't expect them to have made a meal out of their mother just yet.

Interesting with so many females on eggs, I think it really is a seasonal thing. Good luck with them


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## fantasticp (Jul 15, 2005)

I can't believe she let them do that. Isn't she supposed to eat the babies if anything?


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## Wade (Jul 21, 2005)

Do we know for sure that the babies actually kill the mother, or does she just die from the strain and stress of reproduction and they eat her then? 

Wade


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## El Johano (Jul 21, 2005)

Wade said:
			
		

> Do we know for sure that the babies actually kill the mother, or does she just die from the strain and stress of reproduction and they eat her then?
> 
> Wade


I'm not aware of anyone seeing the actual event. However they do eat from her, that's for certain...

I think it is unlikely that she dies from the stress of reproduction, females with eggs where the eggs have been removed due to disturbance seems to survive (although I am only aware of one such case..).

Another point is that the females survive long enough for the plings to develope. Maybe there is some sort of trigger when the plings are big enough that triggers the mother to die, or maybe she is killed by the young. If only the stress of reproduction was the cause, the female might not die at the right time, which would not be benificial from an evolutionary point of view.


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## Wade (Jul 21, 2005)

True, but it's impossible to say weather or not the behaviors we observe in captivity reflect behaviors that take place in the wild. This could be an artifact of captivity, it may not happen at all in the wild as far as we know. It's entirely possible that there are dietary, environmental or seasonal factors at work that may cause wild centipedes to behave differently than their captive bretheren. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen in the wild, I have no idea, but phenomenon that happen in our terrariums don't always indicate Darwinian pressures at work.


Wade


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## El Johano (Aug 5, 2005)

*Update*

After their first moult:





Starting too look more like pedes and less like worms now


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## Steven (Aug 5, 2005)

Yeah that's more like it !

CUTE ! 


very nice picture btw  :clap:


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## El Johano (Aug 5, 2005)

Thanks 
How are your females doing?


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## Steven (Aug 5, 2005)

El Johano said:
			
		

> How are your females doing?


1 has eaten her eggs   ,... the other is still on it


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## El Johano (Aug 5, 2005)

Steven said:
			
		

> 1 has eaten her eggs   ,... the other is still on it


Too bad, I'll keep my fingers crossed for your other female. 
My other female on eggs also ate them...


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## Steven (Aug 5, 2005)

El Johano said:
			
		

> Too bad, I'll keep my fingers crossed for your other female.
> My other female on eggs also ate them...


i would allready be more then happy if these get into their 2nd instar plings
  

(sorry for the bad pict,... but i keep disturbence to a minimum right now


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## El Johano (Aug 5, 2005)

Nice  :clap: 
Good luck!


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## Bigboy (Aug 6, 2005)

So.... Who wants to toss me a freebie?  Just joking of course, or am I?  Those are some cool pics.  And what an animal, cannibalizing it's mother before it's even 2nd instar.  Awsome.


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## Galapoheros (Jan 24, 2013)

I'm bringing up this old thread because one of my galapagoensis females seems to have disappeared, I can see through a tiny window in the glass, the pedelings are getting fat "somehow".  It's just more support that it might be standard that these big pedes, gigantea, galapagoensis and possibly viridicornis females die and turn into baby food.  I'm betting the other is on plings, maybe I should try to take her out if so, before the babies eat her and see if she makes it.  Then give the babies something pre-killed to eat(?)  I'm of course going to leave this batch in there because it makes sense that they molt again in there before they come out.  But, I may mess around with the other if it is with plings.

I'm kind of happy to say the other one is not on eggs, just nice and healthy looking, been under for a month or two.  Two batches would have been too much for me, but on the other side of the coin, I would have sold a lot of them cheap just to get rid of so many so I kind of feel bad that way.

I also wonder if the specimen at the beginning of this thread was galapagoensis but I tend to think it was gigantea.  The plings look the same, same yellow, different shaped head.  The bodies have a gray color, really hard to see in there though.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Galapoheros (Jan 26, 2013)

The more I look at the plings over here at this stage and considering the ID confusion at the time of the OP, I would bet that the female at the beginning of this thread is what people now call Sc. galapagoensis ...in the hobby today anyway.


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## khil (Jan 28, 2013)

8 year bump, you deserve an award 

Well keep us updated on your plings and dont forget pictures!


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## Galapoheros (Jan 28, 2013)

If you want you can send money to this address......  haha, anywhoooo, I'll post other stuff in that 'galapagoensis, just sayin' thread.


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