Comments on: Booga booga booga!

by: Jonadab

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:40:38 +0000

North-American house centipedes are only scary in close-up photographs. In real life they're so flighty that it's pretty well impossible to be frightened of them. You turn on a small desk lamp and they flee the scene in obvious terror, practically tripping over themselves, unsure which way to turn in their rush to escape. They'd be funny if they weren't so pitiable.

by: WiseGuy

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:14:59 +0000

Thanks so much for posting that! From what you (and PaulM) said of the sex distinctions now i know my huntsman is a "hunstwoman" ;) You see, one wandered into my house in early October last year and i've kept it in a tuperware container, feeding it roaches and lizards, ever since (i'm planning to move it to a disused aquarium). If you keep one you lose a lot of your fear of them, although i still jump when it moves suddenly. My theory on this is that humans have evolved to be reflexively wary of small creatures that dart rather more quickly than we can easily track with our eyes, and thus protect ourselves from (by knowing in which direction to run screaming like a little girl). Anyway, i've taken some semi-decent pics and video of her pouncing on the live roaches i've put in with her. I've read that in Laos they grow to a foot in diameter! Oh, and the banded huntsman's bite can cause heart palpitations, which might not be such a laughing matter in a hospital, especially if the victim is elderly...

by: Tom

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:10:04 +0000

Damn Interesting - another website that will suck time from your life - featured an article a little while back on Giant Carnivorous Centipedes. If you've ever wanted to see a centipede 30cm long eat a mouse, I commend it to you. If you ever want to sleep again, then perhaps avoid it... Video clips are of course included in that article (linked at the end of the text). One of the most fascinating things was that these centipedes have adapted to clive up to cave roofs, hang back down using their hind legs to grip on to the surface, and then grab bats as they fly past.

by: Chuckaluphagus

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 05:42:41 +0000

I'm quite familiar with the North American house centipede as they invaded my old flat every winter. They're usually only about five or seven centimeters long but they can grow much, much larger if they live long enough. Even small, they're just damn creepy. The worst one I ever saw was about 25 centimeters long; my immediate, instinctive reaction upon seeing it flying across my flatmate's floor in the middle of the night was to grab his shoe and beat it into a fine paste.

by: Phage

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 20:15:10 +0000

I once 'saved' a huntsman by throwing it out of the back door into the yard. Unluckily for it, the yard was patrolled by a group of Bantams. The evolution of birds from dinosaurs was never so clear as they descended on the hapless spider like a pack of raptors on crack. The poor devil was torn apart in a frenzy of leaf litter, feathers and stabbing beaks . That was the first and only time I have felt sorry for a spider. As it turns out, Aus has some damn fine centipedes to add to the list of things that could make you feel poorly.

by: Lord Booga

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:53:31 +0000

We've only just gotten huntsman spiders here, leaked from Aussie somehow... more bad news for someone who hates spiders.

by: Bern

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:37:21 +0000

Heh. I saw one of those "house centipedes" in the pantry while I was working in Detroit back in '00. Asked the guys at work what it was, they said "Oh, it's just a centipede". Then I asked was it venomous, and they all laughed at me - right up to the point where I explained that centipedes in Oz look like scorpions gone wrong, grow up to a foot long, and can kill a man...

Well, I may have been exaggerating. Slightly. Haven't seen many huntsmans around here for a while, though. There was one on the front window last week, but none for ages before that. Maybe the asian geckos have eaten them all? I kinda miss being chased around the house by something a thousandth my size... ;-)

by: Kynetx

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 12:16:01 +0000

If Australia ever gets tired of tourism, those photos are sure to scare off anyone.

by: PaulM

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 08:41:30 +0000

Huntsmen are great spiders, and you get them here in South Africa too (where we have other names for them, including Lizard-Eating Spider). While not as big as some of the Aussie species, they can still be quite fun when you encounter them in the dark in your house. Here is a rather exciting view of one I found a while back, you can see how big this individual was in this picture. Judging by the size of the pedipalps on the spider in your picture I'd hazard a guess that it's a male (males generally have bigger pedipalps than females). A few days ago I found a dead female in my bedroom. Not being sure why it was dead, I've currently got it in a container next to my PC monitor so I can see if it was killed by a parasitic wasp. It would be really interested if something emerged from this spider in a few days time.

by: RichVR

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 05:19:34 +0000

I have killed a few of those house centipedes recently in my kitchen. The North East USA has been having a rather warm December and I think they are a bit confused and wandering about.

I didn't know that they kill and eat other insects. They may very well kill more noxious insects and so I will leave them alone and let them go their merry way...

Yeah right...

I hate the creepy squirmy suckers. If you come up out of the basement you're dead. Stay down there and eat each other dammit!