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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Giant Carnivorous Centipede!






Scolopendra gigantea. The largest centipede in the world is commonly known as the Amazonian giant centipede, and lives in South America's Amazon Jungle and also on the islands of Trinidad and Jamaica. They usually grow to around thirty-five centimeters, the size of a man's forearm, and they are a venomous, red-maroon centipede with forty-six yellow-tinted legs. They live in dark, damp corners of caves and rocks and creep out for food. Of course, many centipedes are carnivorous, but that diet usually included bugs smaller than themselves. The Amazonian giant centipede is not only an incredibly swift runner, but also is an amazing climber. It eats mice, lizards, frogs, birds and mice, and with a quick motion snags its prey and injects a deadly venom, killing small animals in seconds. Strangest of all, this creepy centipede preys on a hugely ambitious prey: bats. They silently scale cave walls to the roof, where the bats are nesting. They then hang on to the rock with their back legs and detach their front legs, grabbing an unsuspecting bat as it flies away. The bat writhes in the grasp of many legs, but is condemned by the injection of the poison. The centipede then eats the entire bat right there, on the cave ceiling, proceeding to pull its upper three quarters of the body back onto the rock and crawling back into its hole.
In my opinion, this creature is very creepy and weird, and yet amazing. Its size makes it incomparable to any other bug, and what it does freaks me out. It feasts on bats? How does it detach itself from the ceiling and catch a flying animal? Truly amazing.

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