Serpent Island centipede
The Serpent Island centipede is a big yellowish centipede that lives on just two tiny islands near Mauritius. It is longer than your hand is wide. At night it comes out from under rocks to hunt.
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Fun facts
It lives nowhere else in the world but on two small islands.
On Serpent Island there can be about 12 grown-up centipedes in one square metre.
It cannot swim. It may have reached its islands on floating rafts of plants, or when the islands were joined to Mauritius long ago.
It used to live on Mauritius itself, but animals that people brought there wiped it out.
Geckos and skinks on the islands like to eat it.
Most asked questions about Serpent Island centipede
?How big is the Serpent Island centipede?
It grows to at least 9.5 centimetres long.
?Where does the Serpent Island centipede live?
Only on Round Island and Serpent Island near Mauritius.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Scolopendra abnormis
- Group
- Centipedes and millipedes
- Family
- Scolopendridae
- Classification
- Chilopoda > Scolopendromorpha > Scolopendridae
- Lives on
- Africa
Where the facts come from
- Scolopendra abnormis (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 MaximusViridius. CC BY-SA 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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