Centipede Farms in China?

[DubiaW]

This was totally a hypothetical situation. I would never try to bring back something like that illegally. Besides, mutilans isn't my favorite species and wouldn't be worth the risks. This was more of me spouting my silly ideas about a ridiculous plan.

Thanks for the input about centipede farms.

As for medicinal purposes, I read a Chinese article recently about a woman who sick from eating 10 centipedes (S.s.mutilans by the looks of them) to cure some imagined disease. I've also seen a stock photo labeled "Medicinal Isopods" that was actually a huge hand full of dead, dried giant pill millipedes. This stuff is just as mythical and superficial as rhino horn or bear bile. It is a shame that even magnificent creatures like Scolopendra are only farmed because of age-old superstitions.
However, there have been both American and Chinese scientific papers on how mutilans venom could be used as a painkiller or cancer treatment. Hopefully centipedes can be used for real and useful things.

Meanwhile, invert lovers like us can do good work with captive breeding animals and being responsible with them. Good luck to everyone here who is or wishes to do more work with centipedes.

I ran across something the other day about S. viridicornis venom being used to cure cancer. This is possible considering that is exactly what we were working on in the snake venom lab I worked at in college. However the "wiki" style article was just cut and pasted from others like it and I never found the original source.

 

[Galapoheros]

In know a guy that received a brown box shipment of T's from Brazil that ended up doing three years in prison. .

I suspect there is more to this story. That is a ridiculous sentence for "brown boxing" a shipment of Ts imo. There must have been 100s of them, or something more he was smuggling. If a fed case, there should be a link to it, I have to see that with my own eyes.

 

[DubiaW]

I believe it. I have worked for the prison system. Arizona is notorious for giving out ridiculous sentences and making inmates serve their full time. One of my inmate workers got 3.5 years for throwing a rock at someone and missing him (while trespassing). He is serving a full sentence. A lot of states release inmates on 20% of time served and allow multiple sentences to be served congruently, (for example an inmate with two 100 year sentences could be released in 20 years in some other states). Arizona doesn't even have a parole board that sees inmates that were sentenced with with life after the 1994 statute that changed the wording from "25 year to life with parole" to "Life without parole for 25 years." The lifers that were expecting parole, at 25 years, who were sentenced after that will have to go in front of a clemency board after 2019. Clemency is very difficult to obtain and Arizona will fight all the way up to the Supreme Court for individual cases if they have to. CCA and their corporate sponsored politicians have controlled this state for years and most of these draconian sentencing laws can be traced back to ALEC and CCA lawyers writing the legislation. The words "without parole" changed the states legal obligation to provide it. It is going to have to go to the SCOTUS to be overturned. It keeps CCA prisons full. Inmate slave labor and private prisons are the cornerstone of Arizona's economy. They don't care how they get it. Corporations, private companies and even some farms use inmate labor. Of course it doesn't make any sense if you approach the problem from an ethical standpoint but profit motive has built in it's own moral justification. They have an ethical obligation to provide increased profit to their stock holders and that is all that matters to them in their eyes. Once they model their businesses on inmate labor their stock value depends on it. It is bass-akwards logic that hurts everyone.

 

[Staehilomyces]

@Crowbawt I just noticed your signature. When I first read the paragraph that quote came from a few months ago, I laughed sooooo hard! What made it funnier was the fact that my old morsitans was curled up on my hand at that moment. Ah well, I guess I'm the kind of guy who he wants dead

 

[Bob Lee]

Also, what is the legality of bringing back a centipede from China? If I was to, say, hide a centipede in a container and stuff it in my backpack, would there be any sort of penalties if it was confiscated? What if it was just a pedeling and barely large enough to be noticed?

On the Chinese side they would ask you what it's for, and then you either give it up pretending you didn't know and throw it away or you eat it on the spot telling them it's food.....or tell them it's a dead centipede and hope it doesn't move(If it does then you would have pay the fee because you are obviously lying, probably a couple hundred Yuan). There is Airlines like SiChuan Airline where they barely care if your stuff is overweight or if you are taking shady things with you. But on the other side of the flight it's a complete different story(Because they are actually getting possible invasive specie going in their country) that I don't know and don't want to find out .

 

[antinous]

Thought this would work well in this thread

 

[SonsofArachne]

Here's the kicker. They were all species that already existed in the trade. His friend and him were trading their own legally purchased and or captive bred T's. They weren't even wild caught. In most states it costs about $50 to $70 dollars a day to house an inmate (not including medical expenses). AZ is approximately $57, where he and I live. For three years that is $62,415 alone not including medical. Typically a home and auto loan go down the drain when someone is imprisoned and their immediate family goes on welfare (home loans are often backed by the fed). So yeah, that is a lot of tax payer money for nothing. But hey, think of all the black and grey tattoos you can get for a case of ramen and five sticky buns.

This guy owns a pet store now. He doesn't ship anything through the mail now unless he is absolutely sure.

This guy must have had a lousy lawyer. 3 yrs is ridiculously excessive for his "crime".

 

[DubiaW]

This guy must have had a lousy lawyer. 3 yrs is ridiculously excessive for his "crime".

Arizona is handing out seven year sentences for DUI left and right. Three years is not excessive in Arizona, it's short time.

 

[SonsofArachne]

Arizona is handing out seven year sentences for DUI left and right. Three years is not excessive in Arizona, it's short time.

If this was his first offense in most states he would have got off with a fine. Arizona's sentencing is a little ridiculous. The DUI sentences make a little more sense though, seeing as there is potential for harm.

 

[Fox402]

Arizona is handing out seven year sentences for DUI left and right. Three years is not excessive in Arizona, it's short time.

This just isn't true at all. The only way someone is getting 7 years in prison is if they have multiple DUIs (not even sure how many it would take, but a lot) or if they killed someone in a DUI crash.

As for your claim that someone got 3 years for a single brown box of tarantulas, that can't be true either based on the information given. Either an exaggeration, or your friend is a prolific smuggler.

Edit: I don't want to minimize the penalties of smuggling tarantulas or other animals, regardless of how we may feel about the current laws. You will be looking at large fines and possible jail time. However, you will NOT get 3 years in prison for a box of tarantulas. Source for all this legal mumbo jumbo: I've been in law enforcement for over 17 years, including years as a State Trooper, and currently a Special Agent for the federal agency that controls the US borders.

 

[AZCeptipede]

Here is a link to buy dry S. mutilans "from a farm raised source."

https://www.thailandunique.com/edible-centipede

They could sell the live pedes for more than that... Is there really such a big demand to eat these guys?

 

[Scoly]

Old thread, but a few things worth clarifying:

1. Yes, there are centipede farms in China. People farm them small scale in their homes, and there are large-scale factory farms, as evidenced by how many adds selling dried centipedes by the kilo you can find on alibaba: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/centipedes_1.html
2. To whoever commented above that they (the Chinese) wouldn't have the know-how to breed them, that is a ridiculous statement. They have been breeding centipedes for 100's if not 1000's of years. They probably find it hilarious how excited we get when one of our mutilans pops a clutch, and completely ridiculous that we keep them in heated tubs.

I remember a Chinese man casually remarking on a post on a FB group that he stopped using frogs as food source for centipedes because of the number of parasites they bring. How many Western centipede keepers know that?

Westerners tend to forget both how massive and insular China is. They have their centipede hobby communities, with very little overlap into the Western communities. They keep all the SA giants, African species, as well as species we've never even heard of. Interestingly, they also seem to keep them very differently to us. Perhaps as Westerners we have a lot to learn from the Chinese centipede keeping community, especially since ours is decades old whereas theirs stretches back generations (albeit only in the context of farming, and without exotic species from other parts of the world, but still).

Here are some photos I got by translating "pet centipede" to Chinese (simplified), which is 宠物蜈蚣 and entering that into Google Image search:

Clay balls is a substrate I repeatedly see in Chinese set ups:

I have absolutely no idea what substrate this is:

Paper towels I've used in quarantine setups, but there is no reason it shouldn't work in a permanent setup either:

Gravel also works, for both low and high humidity species:

 

[Scoly]

As for the farms, this is how it's done!

Indoors:

Outdoors:


Factory level - probably 10,000's of centipedes in these photos:

And here is the end product:

Some more photos here: http://www.69cy.net/?tag=si-yang

And before anyone goes adding a stupid comment saying how cruel this is, remember these centipedes lead a 100 times nicer life than the cows who's milk makes it into half of the junk you eat...