[mrs bouquet]

OMG.    I spotted something moving across my bedroom carpet.  Thought caterpillar.   No, it was a centipede.
I picked it up in tissue, got to the back door and it had gone.  Went back in bedroom and it was still walking on carpet.  Picked it up again, and threw it outside and nudged it over the terrace.
Then I decided to google if it was good for the garden.  I wish I hadn't.    I didn't realise there are house ones.
Now I am so nervous that I keep going to check my room.
I am really hoping that it had come in on my clothing, which were on the chair, .   I had been dealing with a very waterlogged and broken pot, which I took into the greenhouse.   Do you think thats how I came by it.  I have never ever seen one before.   What a nasty wee beast.  Mrs Bouquet

[Subversive_plot]

We commonly get house centipedes (almost certainly a different species). Ours are harmless.

We also get many kinds of centipedes (and millipedes) outdoors, also harmless.  My compost pile is full of them. They are good decomposers. Some centipedes also eat insects in the garden.

Did you know that millions of years ago, in the Carboniferous Period, there were giant millipedes eight feet long? They are mostly known from fossilized trackways, left in ancient mud. There are some modern ones in Africa 30 centimeters long.

[Aunt Sally]

Goodness me 

[Yorkie]

 

[jezza]

Theres some in Borneo that are bright pink about 9 inch long,highly toxic if touched  jezza

[Goosegirl]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! We get some woodlice crawling on the floor inside which I hate.

[Subversive_plot]

Theres some in Borneo that are bright pink about 9 inch long,highly toxic if touched  jezza

Puerto Rico has some big one as well (Amazonian giant centipede, Scolopendra gigantea), they live in sugar cane fields and similar places.  They are brown with orange-brown legs, and also have a nasty bite.

[Aunt Sally]

Rainbow ones too 

[Subversive_plot]

Rainbow ones too 

Aunty, that is actually an Anomalocaris!    Or possibly Peytoia nathorsti,  I sometimes have a hard time telling my plush Cambrian Radiodont arthropods apart. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiodonta

[Goosegirl]

I thought it could be a Playtoyia Amazonia which, so I'm told, lived during the Plasticine era. 

[Subversive_plot]

I thought it could be a Playtoyia Amazonia which, so I'm told, lived during the Plasticine era. 

Sooo funny!

Google "plush Anomalocaris" sometime.  You won't believe how many plush toys are now being sold based on that particular fossil.  Maybe 50 to 100 different designs / makers.  A Paleozoic teddy bear?  I suspect sold mostly through museum gift shops.

Anomalocaris was first found in the Burgess Shale in the mountains of British Columbia.  The name means "unusual shrimp", the fossil was first known just from it's mouth appendages (separated from the rest of the animal), which was mistaken for a shrimp.  Another fossil was found that was a disk-shaped set of teeth (radiodont), it was named Peytoia.  Turns out that Anomalocaris has a similar disk of teeth, and there were later finds of the whole animal, as well as other species that were similar in build, but distinct enough to be separated from Anomalocaris.