Giant pill millipede
The giant pill millipede is shiny emerald green and the biggest pill millipede in the world. When it gets scared, it rolls up into a hard ball. A big one makes a ball as large as a baseball.
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Fun facts
The girls grow twice as long as the boys, up to about 9 centimetres.
Girls have 21 pairs of legs and boys have 23 pairs.
Sometimes tens of thousands of them march together in a huge swarm, all walking the same way.
Such a swarm can be more than a kilometre long.
It lives for three to four years.
Most asked questions about Giant pill millipede
?How big is the giant pill millipede?
Boys are about 4.5 centimetres long and girls up to 9 centimetres. Rolled up, a big girl is the size of a baseball.
?What does the giant pill millipede eat?
It eats dead leaves and other rotting plant bits.
?Is the giant pill millipede dangerous?
No. It does not bite. It just rolls into a ball to protect itself.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Zoosphaerium neptunus
- Named by
- Butler, 1872
- Group
- Centipedes and millipedes
- Family
- Arthrosphaeridae
- Classification
- Diplopoda > Sphaerotheriida > Arthrosphaeridae
- Lives on
- Africa
- Also known as
- Emerald green giant pill millipede
Where the facts come from
- Zoosphaerium neptunus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Julien Renoult. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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