Ruud Kleinpaste discusses house centipedes, sparked by a phone call from an enthusiastic young bug finder.  

It's always exciting when we're smelling the beginning of spring. Some invertebrates are starting to wake up – especially when they have their own secret hiding place inside your home. 

Here’s the picture: 

A lovely phone call, plus a pretty cool picture of a glass container, held by an enthusiastic young lady who kept a great eye on a 4.5 centimetre long Scutigera coleoptrata. 

When you're dealing with one of those wonderful House Centipedes, I can totally imagine that many young Nature Nerds simply can’t take their eyes off these fast-moving creatures. 

They run at 40 centimetres per second! Imagine that speed with a 4.5 cm long body. 

They have a huge, elegant body with 15 pairs of rather long legs that become longer from the front towards the back. 15 pairs of legs means that this centipede is fully grown and equipped with super-fast feet and really long antennae in the front of their head. 

By the way: when a very young centipede lands on the planet, it only has 4 pairs of legs. When it moults to a larger version, it will be walking on 5 pairs of legs. After the next moult 7 pairs, followed by 9 pairs, then 11 pairs, 13 pairs and finally (with the last moult) 15 pairs of legs. 

The centipede is then fully grown, and it remains active with 15 pairs of extremely fast legs. 

In New Zealand we have two species of Centipedes (or maybe even more) that arrived here from the Mediterranean area. Their speed indicates great amazing predator movements during the day, but especially at night. Gardeners may not realise that they're great predators of many plant pests in your garden and inside your house: caterpillars, small beetles, larvae of young insects, flies, small wasps… their job is fabulous! 

I realise more and more that our young New Zealanders are getting better and better when it comes to learning about Invertebrates and how to look after all these creatures… and what their jobs are in nature! No longer too scared of them and ready to feed them too! 

Thank you Raine! You’re doing a great job – we need people like you to look after our environment. 

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