365 Urban Species. #147: House Centipede

[urbpan]

photo by cottonmanifesto

Urban species #147: House centipede Scutigera coleoptrata

Well, if you made it past the photograph you're better than most. No other animal, pound for pound, can excite and distress people quite like the house centipede. It appears suddenly, fifteen pairs of legs propelling it across the wall at great speed. Even people who are fully aware that this animal is a beneficial member of the household, eating small flies and other insects, will kill it on sight.

Apparently indigenous to the Mediterranean (a region of origin for numerous urban species) and then accidentally transported to subtropical America, the house centipede has made the building by building journey to northern states. Like house mice, house flies, and several species of cockroach, they are always found in association with humans in their new temperate range. The great indoors serves as a series of subtropical islands, temperature and humidity controlled for the primates that created it.

Unlike other centipedes, house centipedes' body segments are fused; also its legs are unusually long, and are of different legths. Each of these adaptations probably adds to the creature's running speed. The racing stripes probably don't make it any faster, but help make it a distinctive and attractive animal. Still with me?

All centipedes are predators that hunt with a pair of legs that have been modified into venomous fangs. House centipedes are reputed to be capable of delivering a bee sting-like bite to humans, but I have yet to hear a first person account. For my part, I have handled them without incident--your results may vary. If indeed they can pierce human skin and inject venom, an allergic reaction could result, as in any envenomation.

House centipedes are a personal favorite, and I have written about them previously here: http://urbpan.livejournal.com/60469.html
and
here: http://urbpan.livejournal.com/64272.html
and centipedes in general
here: http://urbpan.livejournal.com/tag/centipede

Comments

Centipedes' daily planner?

[(Anonymous)]

The only bugs I kill are roaches. Centipedes are cool. I've done the exact same thing as the guy above, and performed a paper-towel rescue on a waterlogged centipede I found floating in the tub after my showe one time.

But that's not what sent me here.

Does anybody know if these things have a regular daily route thru their territory the way somebody told me toads do? I ask because twice in the last week I've seen one crawl across the same spot on the wall at approximately the same time in the evening. Then I found out they can live for 5 years. I couldn't kill a bug like that.

Mostly, tho, I just feel sort of sorry for the three that I know live here--two in the bathroom, a big and a little, and another big one in the kitchen--because the only ohther bugs I've seen since I caulked every crack and every corner of my apartment 9 years ago (after a roach sighting the first week I lived here) are the wasps that buzz around my living room windows this time of year and the spiders which sometimes build webs up near the ceiling, then slowly starve to death. I don't know what these guys are eating. I haven't even seen a fly in over a year and I've never once been bitten by a mosquite since I've lived here.

Then again, maybe that's all due to the centipedes...