You may have gathered from some of my previous posts that I love creepy crawlies. What can I say? I’m a Zoologist! Its pretty near impossible to freak me out with any kind of crawly, slimy, scuttle, leggy creature – like, you know when you’re a kid and the boys always liked to freak out the girls with worms and bugs, well, instead of running away screaming (which I believe was the reaction that was expected of me), I would be all like “oh, its so cute, let me see”.
That’s all creepy crawlies, except one….I am completely freaked out by centipedes. The biggest spider in the world could be in the bath and I would happily remove it, my only worry being that I don’t hurt it. But I have come across the teeniest centipede in the bath, and (to my shame) I had to get my husband to move it for me.
Thing is, for all they freak me out, I am fascinated by them (I think it’s like a horror movie, I want to look away, I just can’t); some are gigantic (the size of a forearm, eek) and can hang from the roof of a cave to catch bats, some bigger ones have venom strong enough to knock a person out and I've been informed that tourists in Hawaii are told not to poke any big centipedes they find because they will actually chase you (I have to admit, I’d be tempted, but I’d bet I could take on Usain Bolt running away afterwards…..).
This fascination with the horror of centipedes meant that I was super excited (I am not helping in convincing you that scientists aren't all geeks am I?) by a recent scientific paper about a young snake that made the mistake of eating a centipede that was almost the same size as it (the snake was 20 cm long and the centipede 15 cm and was actually heavier than the snake!). That is never going to end well, and it really didn't. The centipede first destroyed all of its predators’ insides and then fought it’s way out of the snake’s lower belly. Sounds like a B movie doesn't it but, seriously, it happened, published in a journal and everything! The thing is, this discovery will have little to no impact on the world of science, but, blimey, is it amazing, and just goes to show the beauty and brutality of nature. And it’s just another good reason for a science geek like me to get excited !
Author - Charlie Burgess
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