User blog:LysurusPeriphragmoides789/Centipedes: The story of a battle with fear that came to a happy ending.

I know this doesn't seem the right wiki, but you guys have always been friends to me, and I plan to make my views known regarding our treatment of such creatures, so I thought "where better to first show my (extremely long) story than here?" If you're scared of bugs, I strongly suggest you read this, even though it is very long.

Intro
Centipedes. They’ve got to be one of the world’s most hated creatures. I’ve seen people who keep dozens of scorpions and tarantulas as pets yet shudder in the proximity of one of these multi-legged arthropods. I’ll warn you now that this is quite a long post, but if you love centipedes already, or more importantly, are fighting a crippling centipede phobia, this is the read for you. Before I plunge into the story of my own relationship with these creatures, I’ll give you a bit of background information first (don’t worry, no pics on this post yet; when they do come they’ll be at the bottom).

Some background info
Centipedes, like insects, arachnids and crustaceans, are arthropods – an enormously successful group of animals that have survived every great mass extinction in their path and today comprise almost 90% of all animal species. Centipedes were among the most ancient of the arthropods, indeed, the first ever known air-breathing land animal, known as Pneumodesmus newmani, was a centipede-like creature. Within the arthropod family, centipedes belong in the group, along with the rather less menacing millipedes. Centipedes can be differentiated from the latter by the fact that they have only one pair of legs per segment, as well as their fast movements and predatory lifestyle. They are in fact among the most effective of all the invertebrate hunters prowling through the undergrowth. Larger species are capable of preying not only on other bugs, but on mice, rats, frogs, toads, birds and even small snakes, not to mention other arthropod predators such as spiders and scorpions. They also hunt bats – I’ll go into the full details of that later, as that knowledge was a key moment in my journey from fear to fascination. Centipedes are guided to their quarry by a pair of extremely sensitive antennae, which pick up the faintest of scents. They will persistently follow the chemical trail until they find their potential prey. Prey is subdued by a combination of brute strength and venom. A long muscular body is used to hold prey still in a manner alike to a python, aided by the centipede’s clawed legs. Then, a pair of specialised legs on the segment just behind the head deliver the final blow. They have been modified into a pair of venomous mandible like appendages (known as forcipules or maxillipeds) that puncture their prey’s skin/exoskeleton and deliver a potent venom.

So I presume you have enough to go off for now, and I hope that the absence of a picture of a huge, foot-long centipede right at the top of the page means that you are still reading this.

Where our fears come from
Some say that fear of centipedes and other “creepy-crawlies” such as spiders is instinctive. It is certain that some other fears certainly are. Fear of heights would have been helpful to the survival of ancestral humans, as potentially lethal drops would almost certainly have been a prevalent and deadly threat. Bugs are a different matter. From my experience (and for a fifteen-year-old, I’ve had a fair bit of it) no child is born with the loathing you see in many an adult when in the presence of such creatures. If anything, they have an avid fascination of all things living, and bugs are no exception. But fear is contagious. Combine peer pressure, misguidance from parents, and fearmongering from the media, and you have all the ingredients for a severe, lifelong phobia. The simple sight of a parent stomping on that spider crouching in the corner prompts a child to react in the same way when presented with a similar situation. Even without any action, sometimes all it takes are a few words.

The story begins
I vividly remember the words that sparked my childhood fear of centipedes. I was five years old, sitting in my house in Cairns, North Queensland. I was flipping through one of those children’s drawing books, that showed step by step details on how to draw various animals and whatnot, trying to find out what to draw next. We were learning about insects at preschool, so I thought a bug of some description would be most appropriate. I was searching amongst the plethora of six-legged creatures looking for something unique, but it was always the same old grasshoppers, ants and butterflies. I paused to consider a spider, but…everyone’s seen those. Then, I turned the page once more, and saw a strange and, as I recall saying, “awesome” creature. I was about to touch pen to paper when my father looked over my shoulder. “Ugh, centipedes,” he said. “Draw anything except one of those mongrels. They can kill you.” Lo and behold! The seeds of a phobia were sown.

My first encounter
So naturally, when it came to my first encounter with a centipede, there was a bit of pre-determined hate before the meeting. A favourite pastime of mine back then was turning the garden hose on full blast and pulverising the garden beds. It may explain why our plants never lasted longer than a week. Naturally, as you would have likely guessed, it was the setting of my first ever meeting with this demon of the bug world. Right out of the midst of the flooded garden, a centipede came running. It was doing no more than fleeing from the tsunami I had caused, but fleeing straight in my direction nonetheless. A child’s mind, warped by fear, gathered but one thing out of the situation. This was clearly a creature that wanted me dead. But before I knew it, it had disappeared beneath the fence. Needless to say, both my dreams and waking moments were dominated by the thought of that multi-legged monstrosity seeking vengeance upon me.

Change
Four centipede-hating years later, I was in Brisbane, my family having moved there the year before (nothing to do with centipedes by the way). I was in the DVD store, looking for a show to buy, when a particular image caught my eye: the distinctive profile of Dionaea muscipula, the Venus Fly Trap, a plant that had fascinated me ever since I first saw them in Cairns. This seems nothing to do with my relationship with centipedes, but bear with me. Above the image were the words The Private Life of Plants, and below the image was a name that I see to this day as the number one cause for my love of nature: David Attenborough. Before I knew it, I was hooked. Every single one of his documentaries made me love the natural world outside more and more, and before I knew it, I had seen about fifteen of his series in the course of a few weeks. One day, after a typical day spent shopping, I bought home Life in the Undergrowth. Knowing what the series was about, I guessed that somewhere in the show, my bug-world adversary was lurking. I watched millipedes plough through the undergrowth, springtails leap extraordinary heights, and velvet worms hunt with their bizarre weaponry – all with a newfound awe. Then, after a dramatic fight between two tailless whipscorpions (Amblypygi), my nemesis appeared. It was a diminutive centipede that was, to my comfort, half the size of Attenborough’s little finger. But what followed was anything but diminutive. Out of a crevice in a Venezuelan cave came Scolopendra gigantea, the giant centipede, a creature with a body length exceeding 35 centimetres. I normally would have screamed NOPE! and blasted the TV into oblivion, but something about Attenborough’s voice kept me watching. Scolopendra scaled the wall of the cave with ease, and hung from the ceiling. What followed was both alarming and truly remarkable. It reached down into the open air with the front of its body, and within seconds, had a bat in the grasp of its many legs. Then, as the scene faded from the huge centipede to a landscape populated by giant earthworms, I realised something remarkable. While my fear certainly hadn’t gone, my hate had given way to sheer, utter respect and fascination.

Pets???
With its villainous position in my mind eased, the centipede’s significance in my life faded also in the coming years. But I never forgot about the invertebrate predator so formidable it was able to turn the tables on small vertebrates. So it was that when I was in a pet shop, browsing the aquatic life on sale, something in the adjacent reptile section caught my eye. Atop several shelves of terrarium decorations were two plastic boxes, both labelled “large centipede”. “What harm can they do to me while in a box?” I asked myself, and with that in mind, I bought them. But at a mere twelve years old, I was not the most attentive owner. Before I knew it, almost six months elapsed where I hadn’t given my two centipedes one glance. Then, almost certain that they were stone dead, I reluctantly checked. One, a large dark green Ethmostigmus rubripes, was indeed dead. The other, a young male Scolopendra morsitans, miraculously survived my neglect. I whispered an apology (pointless, I know) and promised to take better care of him. He remains with me to this day, four years later.

I was quite proud of my progress at that moment. To go from someone who would not be able to sleep if he knew there was a centipede in the house to someone who kept them as pets was no small feat to me. Nevertheless, much as my fear had been eased, I saw those people who handled their centipedes as idiots who were just asking for an envenomation. Don’t get me wrong, I liked centipedes then, but I was still nervous about them.

One final step
Earlier this year, I joined the largest online database concerning invertebrates, Arachnoboards. I spend practically all my time there browsing the myriapods section, which details centipedes and millipedes. In that forum, one member seemed to be unearthing startling observations regarding the intelligence of centipedes. Ever since Life in the Undergrowth, I suspected that centipedes were more intelligent than most bugs – the fact that they go through a specific procedure to catch bats, ignoring lesser prey like cockroaches and beetles along the way, suggested that they were hunting with a purpose, not relying on chance to bring them to their prey. As such, claims about the intelligence of centipedes seemed somewhat plausible to me. The user maintained that centipedes would eventually get used to handling, and will even respond to stimulus such as hand feeding by emerging whenever the owner’s hand was placed in the enclosure (I’m not in any way condoning the handling of centipedes, what I am detailing here is from my observations only). Eventually, I decided to try it out on my Scolopendra morsitans even though he was by far the jumpiest centipede in what was now a small collection of mine. Miraculously, after a week of gentle, cautious hand interactions, he became extremely docile, and no matter what showed no signs of aggression of any kind. He would take food from my fingers and even drink water out of my cupped hand. I could even (no joke) scratch him behind the head! That was the final, happy ending to my relationship with centipedes. I respected their formidability, be it their venom, speed, or just brute strength. Now, I have one more thing to respect them about: the fact that their behaviour showed me that there is no line separating bugs from other animals

A conclusion from my own experience
For those of you who think overcoming fear is stomping on that big ugly bug who in actuality is either scared to death of you or simply unaware of your presence, it’s not. Perhaps the fear is diminished, but the hate remains. Experience has showed me that it’s always better to get to know what you fear. It’s hard to hate something that you truly understand. Turning hate and fear into respect, fascination and love is truly one of the greatest feelings one can experience. When it comes to a peaceful, understanding relationship with the multi-legged creatures we share this planet with, knowledge is our ultimate ally; fear is the enemy. If we can better understand and appreciate all the animals that inhabit this world, not just the ones that “look cuter” or whatever, then the world we live in will become a brighter place for all.