Scolopendra


Scolopendra is a species-rich genus of large tropical centipedes of the family Scolopendridae.

Description

The genus Scolopendra contains many species of centipedes found across the world's tropics and warmer temperate areas. The species vary considerably in coloration and size. Scolopendra are mostly very large centipedes. The largest species found in tropical climates can exceed and are the largest living centipedes in the world.
All Scolopendra species can deliver a painful bite, injecting venom through their forcipules, which are not fangs or other mouthparts, but instead modified legs on the first body segment.

Ecology

Scolopendra are active predators, feeding primarily on insects and other invertebrates. Larger specimens have been observed preying on frogs, tarantulas, lizards, birds, snakes, rodents, and even bats. One southeast Asian species, S. cataracta, is amphibious, and swims and walks underwater.

Venom

The venom is not medically significant for most species, however bites from several species can cause intense and long-lasting pain and swelling. Large Scolopendra species from Asian/Pacific regions, such as Scolopendra subspinipes and Scolopendra dehaani, are particularly potent, and have caused one reported fatality. In 2014, a fatality was reported for a bite from a Scolopendra gigantea. The venom of certain Scolopendra species were found to contain compounds such as serotonin, haemolytic phospholipase, a cardiotoxic protein, and a cytolysin.
YouTube personality and wildlife educator Coyote Peterson has been bitten by Scolopendra heros and declared the envenomation by it to be more painful and dangerous than any sting he has ever received from an animal including tarantula hawks, bullet ants, and Polistes carnifex.

Taxonomic history

Scolopendra was one of the genera created by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, the starting point for zoological nomenclature. Only two of the species originally assigned to the genus remain so: Scolopendra gigantea and S. morsitans; the latter was chosen to be the type species by Opinion 454 of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, overruling a previous designation by Pierre André Latreille, in which he chose Linnaeus' Scolopendra forficata as the type species.

Species

The genus Scolopendra contains these species: