The devil's innovation on the snake
January 24, 2016 11:58 AM   Subscribe

 
"Physiology found that one species of large tropical centipede is a headhunting assassin, often "preferring to attack the head or thorax rather than the abdomen." Scientists found the centipede will even try to reorient its prey to achieve its preferred target."
posted by The Whelk at 12:12 PM on January 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty chill about creepy things. Rats, mice, snakes, most insects - no big deal. But for about 6 months I lived somewhere with a serious house centipede problem. I'd find them in my bed. I want to vomit just thinking about it. People tried to tell me they kept other pests away, but that's like saying "sure your house might be on fire, but at least it keeps the cold out."

Centipedes are a strong argument for an uncaring god.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:16 PM on January 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess it's about time for our William Tell routine.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:20 PM on January 24, 2016 [9 favorites]




I didn't think I could possibly loathe centipedes more than I already did but then I got pregnant and apparently one of the side effects of pregnancy/breastfeeding hormones for me is that my reaction to Horrific Bug Stuff went from "NOPE NOPE NOPE" to something vastly more primal and animal. Like picture a horse freaking the fuck out, all wide eyed and frothin. That's what I'm like when I look at a picture of a bug while I'm gestating a baby.

IN SHORT, WHY DID I CLICK THE LINK, IT WAS FOOLISH. I am sorry I yelled at you, computer.
posted by town of cats at 12:40 PM on January 24, 2016 [12 favorites]


ugh I really hate those fucking ambulatory eyebrows
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:47 PM on January 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's really a shame the films of Tom Six get all the attention these days, because you haven't really lived until you've sat through CENTIPEDE HORROR!
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 12:48 PM on January 24, 2016


And we should all thank David Attenborough for directing our attention to the GIANT BAT-EATING CENTIPEDE!
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 12:52 PM on January 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


The internet deciding it collectively hates all arachnids is really disappointing. It wasn't always this way.
posted by dilaudid at 12:57 PM on January 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yes! I finally have a reason to share my favorite poem:

Feet of snails
are only one,
Birds grow two
to hop and run.
Dogs and cats
and cows grow four,
Ants and beetles
add two more.
Spiders run around
on eight
which may seem
a lot, but wait ---
Centipedes
have more than thirty
feet to wash
when they get dirty.

- Aileen Fisher
posted by lollymccatburglar at 12:59 PM on January 24, 2016 [11 favorites]


Okay, I'm going to stand up for the house centipede. Once you get past the wiggly movement they're actually quite pretty, they eat just about every other bug there is, and they're super shy and generally stay the fuck out of your way. They won't even eat your food! They're great. If you have so many of them around that they're a problem, you probably have a much worse bug infestation that they're probably feeding on. :(
posted by phooky at 1:00 PM on January 24, 2016 [21 favorites]


That was a good try, phooky, but I'm still unconvinced.

I once was surprised by a centipede when I opened my kitchen cupboard to put away dishes. I dropped the dish I was holding and screamed so loudly THE TENANT DOWNSTAIRS phoned to make sure I was okay.

This Verge series is great. I want them to do a review of moths next. It should be titled "Moths: Horror-Insects Determined to Dive-Bomb My Face."
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:21 PM on January 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


In the spring, when I see them in all their horrific, frenetic multi-legged scurrying about on my walls, I carefully capture them in a mason jar and, opening a window, let them fall gently down to the yard below. They give me the heeby-jeebies like nothing else. The first time I ever saw a house centipede, when I was a grown man in my mid-40's, I regressed about 40 years and freaked the fuck out.
posted by Auden at 1:40 PM on January 24, 2016


The best we could come up with for the centipede — a dumb, stupid, no-good nightmare creature (more on that later) — is a 2009 movie called The Human Centipede.
No James and the Giant Peach?
posted by rouftop at 2:13 PM on January 24, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's kind of funny to me that the actual common name for those things is "house centipedes," because when I first encountered them as a freshman in college, among a bunch of similarly horrified freshmen who knew they weren't true centipedes but had no idea what they were really called, everybody started referring to them as "dorm centipedes."

About the only good thing I can say about them is that they were a good icebreaker. Owing to the fact that I was marginally less afraid of them than most of my dorm neighbors, I once got summoned out of bed to someone else's room at one in the morning to kill a large specimen skittering around on the wall above the bed, and it's hard to stay too shy around someone with whom you've shared that experience.

On the other hand, here is a negative thing: I guess owing to their horrible brittle arthropod body structure, when you kill them their legs fall off. Then you have to find and dispose of the legs. Unless you want your already-nasty dorm carpet to contain arthropod legs.
posted by ostro at 2:15 PM on January 24, 2016


Centipedes hunt and eat cockroaches and bed bugs. #TeamCentipede
posted by Pryde at 2:29 PM on January 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


I like centipedes. I've rescued many of them from my bathtub over the years. I never see any other bugs in my place.
posted by lagomorphius at 2:59 PM on January 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


They're better than earwigs.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:01 PM on January 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Better than Earwigs" is a hell of a band name.
posted by hanov3r at 3:03 PM on January 24, 2016 [12 favorites]


Also not much of an endorsement.
posted by Panjandrum at 3:12 PM on January 24, 2016


The best thing about earwigs is that they have neither ears nor wigs. Crazy, huh?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:26 PM on January 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Better centipedes than the neurotoxic alternative.
posted by Oyéah at 3:34 PM on January 24, 2016


y'all are trying to defend centipedes and while normally I'm a devil's advocate, I'm not having it. give me nasty disease-ridden cockroaches any day.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 4:04 PM on January 24, 2016


There are lots of centipedes in Hawai'i. I lived upslope of Makawao when I was a child, and the memorable incident about centipedes was when one emerged from our wood pile. My dad "stepped on it" and within milliseconds the tail-end stings were through a tough old leather boot, and into his calf. Within seconds his calf swelled to the point the boot could not be removed. He was not pleased, it hurt him a lot and the boot had to be cut off.

After that he kept a sharp hatchet handy, and found that even after you chop them in half, centipedes can *still* stick their tail-end stings through new leather boots.
posted by jet_silver at 4:19 PM on January 24, 2016 [7 favorites]




Better than Earwigs

This is my Better than Ezra/Guided by Voices cover band.
posted by echocollate at 5:37 PM on January 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


I have the same feeling about house centipedes I do about spiders (though I find house centipedes MUCH creepier visually) - that I like them very much as a creature that exists in the world, and salute them for the purpose they serve (eating bugs I like less than them) I just would prefer they do that existing outside of the area where I sleep.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 6:06 PM on January 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


i probably wouldn't be all that happy to wake up to a House Centipede crawling on me, but they can't bite humans (their fangs are too small) and they eat other house vermin ( cockroaches, bedbugs, moths etc.). They are creepy looking, but I always rest a little easier when i see one as I imagine it hunting down all the other things that could be in my house. I even give them little pep talks when i run across them like, "keep up the good work."
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:22 PM on January 24, 2016 [6 favorites]


Came here to complain that they didn't mention James and the Giant Peach. Didn't have to. Left satisfied.
posted by deadbilly at 8:27 PM on January 24, 2016


I have only one thing to say about giant centipedes, and it is this:

After skinny dipping, shake out your shorts.
posted by flabdablet at 12:00 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


You can tell me that they're harmless as much as you want. "Oh," I hear you chuckle, "of course they have poisonous fangs that they try to use to engulf the world, but they're so small they could never puncture human skin!"

Let me tell you a story about my cats. They're old and fat and mellow now, but these two were once the terror of any palmetto bug in the city limits of Houston. They'd chase the big goddamn spiders out of the bathroom, and woe betide the snake that found its way into that foundation-less house. While very friendly to humans (as long as you recognized that when the tuxedo cat leapt onto your shoulder from his hidden perch in the rafters, it was an expression of love), these two were the sort of legend that cockroaches told their tiny chitinous offspring to keep them in line. Even with failing hips and eyes, I saw one of them do a Super-Mario-64-style wall-bounce last summer to snag a moth flying six feet above her. These are the sort of creatures with which you do not ever want to fuck, if you are less than 12 inches tall.

Both cats flee the room at the sight of a house centipede. Not just the big ones, either--the little 1-inch guys who crawl up out of the drain looking for smaller snacks before they graduate to feasting on human flesh. These cats are stone cold killers who fear almost nothing, but who know and respect their own. They know. They know exactly what sort of evil lurks in the hearts of these horrifying arthropods. I am endlessly empathetic toward snakes and spiders and all other insect-eating cohabitants, but a house centipede will always get smooshed by the nearest handy hardcover novel. Preferably a David Foster Wallace tome (or something of similar length), for maximum smooshiness.
posted by Mayor West at 4:41 AM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


When we moved into our house, I put down some flagstones as a kind of patio in the back corner. After some real world practice of lawn growing, I realized that I had made a mistake in not clearing out space with the stones to make them the same height as the ground. I figured I'd pull up the stones and dig out enough dirt to put them level. I was not prepared to discover that not only did ancient, unspeakable evil lived right behind my house, definitely not prepared to find them so close to where I'd just put my hand, and very, very not prepared for there being at least five (probably more, I gave up after the fifth one, the "patio" still doesn't exist) three to four inch long, maybe centimeter wide black centipedes with orange-red legs and mandibles/stingers. I tried to smash the first one with the stone it had been under. All I did was pin it to the clay like soil. Repeated smashing did nothing.

Luckily in Japan, they have these awesome things for starting grills/burning down your house: you take a half liter sized can of propane, and attach a little blow torch attachment. While burning centipedes don't smell that great, I can report that fire kills centipedes just fine.

Two legs good, four legs perfectly fine, six legs gross, eight legs evil, ten legs unspeakable evil, more than ten legs, eldritch horror.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:25 AM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


I am endlessly empathetic toward snakes and spiders and all other insect-eating cohabitants, but a house centipede will always get smooshed by the nearest handy hardcover novel.

I shalln't play with you again until you've had a WASH
posted by flabdablet at 8:31 AM on January 25, 2016


Centipedes are terrible.

And yet, millipedes, with so many more legs, are so lovely and harmless.
posted by millipede at 9:24 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, house centipedes are the one bug besides spiders that I will never kill. Apparently, they're the apex predator of the insect world. They'll even eat bedbugs!

I live on a ground floor apartment in Brooklyn, and I'll see a centipede scurrying around my apartment about once a month or so. I always leave 'em alone. They've never given me a problem. And this may be coincidental, but I never see any other bugs around my apartment -- no roaches, no nothin'.

So ... go team 'pedes! Or something.
posted by panama joe at 11:57 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Centipedes are terrible.

And yet, millipedes, with so many more legs, are so lovely and harmless.
posted by millipede at 2:24 AM on January 26
[1 favorite +] [!]


Uh... eponypropagandical?
posted by Ghidorah at 9:00 PM on January 25, 2016


Oh oh oh oh I have a joke!

One day a man decided to get a pet. For whatever reason, he decided to get a centipede. He put his new pet in a nice new box, with an area for sleeping and a bit of food. He named his centipede Josh.

His first night home with his Josh, the centipede, he decides he wanted to go to the pub. So he opens Josh's box and asks, "Hey Josh, I'm going to the pub, do you want to come?"

He doesn't get an answer.

He puts his shoes on and asks again. "Hey Josh, I'm going to the pub, do you want to come?"

He doesn't get an answer.

He puts his hat on and asks again. "Hey Josh, I'm going to the pub, do you want to come?"

When finally he gets a response. "Hold on! I'm still putting my shoes on!"
posted by Gor-ella at 2:22 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've always understood that house centipedes can bite people, but it's just an annoyance, like a small mosquito bite. And that they eat spiders along with all their other prey. Have I been mislead? They are one of my three kill-on-sight crawlies, along with silverfish and mosquitoes. Everything else gets a pass. Having loved all creepy crawlies since I was little, they are the only ones that have sent me running into another room screaming for my ex to "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!"

And Gor-ella's joke has redeemed this thread and all of its squick.
posted by youngergirl44 at 11:19 AM on February 1, 2016


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