Centipede breeding

[Cronoss]

Mr. Internet asked me to share my experence breeding pedes with you all.so here goes.



In 1994 i had 10 S.subspinipes. could not find any info on them anywhere.I really wanted to breed them,but i couldld'nt even sex them.
So i decided since I had so mamy of them that I would try & pray.
I built a "breeding cage" of my own design.i took two plastic sweater boxes and connected them with a 4" clear plastic tube.
i put a cap on both ends of the tube.
I tryed to find some subtle differance in the pedes.that might give me a clue as to there sex. that did'nt work.
Now I put a pede in each box.Both where 7"
Iwanted to see if they would react to each other at all(like t's will tap)after about a week of watching i was no futher than before.
So I decided to open the tube.after making sure that both were filled with as much food they could eat.
the tude was open for about an hour when one went through to the other side.He/she walked around for about 5min.before the other noticed.then with a quickness he/she ate the invader

so a week later i repeted this with another pede.
this time the invader did not get eaten but embraced
if you have ever seen millipede mate than you know what i'm talking about

i think the invader was the male cause after about a minute of what looked like hugging the invader broke the grasp and ran like hell.I seperated them and waited.
the one i thought was the male died 4 months later.
and a year later the"female" died. and no pedelings.
I decided i liked my pedes too much to risk loosing any more.
i thought that i would wait till i could find info on how to sex them before trying again.Well 9 years later I still don't know how to sex them.

Well thats my story and i'm sticking to it.
thanks
Bryan

 

[MrDeranged]

Unfortunately to my knowledge, the only way to accurately sex them is to dissect them. Apparently this isn't a very practical way to sex them as all your left with is what you now know was whatever sex centipede. Not much breeding going on with corpses unless you run in some pretty twisted circles... ;P

The only other way to sex them accurately is if they either lay eggs or a spermatophore. Eggs = Female, Spermatophore = Male.

One way to go about breeding that I have heard success stories with is to rotate the tanks. By this I mean, you just keep switching the pedes from tank to tank. This way, there is never more than one in a tank at a time, therefore no possibility for one to eat another. The male will supposedly pick up on the females phermones and lay a spermatophore in the enclosure. When the female is placed back in the tank with the spermatophore, she will retreive it, thereby fertilizing herself. Not a foolproof method, but one with a zero mortality rate....

Scott

 

[petitegreeneyes]

That's what I was told, mrderanged and the person had plings a while after.