Legs Before Wicket: The story of the millipede and its more devious distant cousin, the centipede

They’re ancient creatures with fossils going back 430 million years. They’re arthropods, not insects, and though their name means “a hundred legs”, none have exactly that number: they may have from 20 to 300, with one set of legs for each segment of their body.

Ingeniously, each pair of legs is longer than the pair in front of it, so the creature doesn’t trip itself up while running. They’re carnivorous predators, pouncing on insects such as cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, and silverfish. The big guys — they can be from between a few millimeters long to over 30 cm — like the Amazonian giant centipede — may even take down mice, small lizards, frogs and birds. They’re armed with hair-covered antennae for detection, and poison-loaded pincer-like claws with which they grab and stab. Worldwide (and they’re found pretty much everywhere), there are around 8,000 species of which we have “described” 3,000. Usually brown, grey or reddish in colour, they must have humid conditions to prevent themselves from getting desiccated — hence a preference for bathroom drains and damp basements. They will bite if cuddled, and their bites are poisonous and very painful (bites cause swelling, blisters, chills and fever), but not fatal. But if you have bee allergy or are a child, they can be very dangerous company. They don’t have a very scandalous or exciting sex-life: the male deposits his sperm for the lady to pick up with no touching between the couple — how the killjoys on the lunatic fringe would love to make this law!

Centipedes are scrunched up by small animals like mongooses, as also lizards, birds, mice, snakes, beetles, and of course,  skewered and then deep-fried or grilled by the Chinese. The Japanese have been known to keep them as pets. They live long and may writhe around for six years.

You may think their distant cousins, the millipedes, would have the edge over them in the horror stakes: their name means “a thousand legs” after all and they have two pairs of legs for every segment of their body. But no, they’re pretty harmless in comparison: their legs look like moving fringes (they peak at about 750 legs) and being located under their bodies (instead of alongside, like the oars of some kind of nightmarish serpent-boat) somehow look more decorous. They also don’t have the fearsome armament of the centipedes, no claws, jaws or poison glands, nor the speed or ferocity. The poor guys are known as detritivores, which means consumers of dead plant matter: rotting leaves, grasses, vegetable matter, which they usefully break down for us, but how exciting is that! They can, however, become agricultural and crop pests. When under attack, by birds, large insects, frogs and other small animals, they curl into a tight ball and some may even secrete noxious substances which cause pain, itching and blisters. Some capuchin monkeys have learned to deliberately irritate them and rub the exudation over their own bodies as a sort of insect repellent. There are 12,000 species and they’re also ancient creatures, which at one time, may have been over 61/2 feet long.

And ah, they enjoy a happier love life than the centipedes because they actually come into physical contact with each other while mating. It seems like they have scored one heavily over those ignorant drain-loving freaks after all!

Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and birdwatcher