Millipedes - all colours plus brown

JoanYoung · Post by **JoanYoung** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:26 am

Thanks Erland. I know the area quite well and although it is ony two hours drive from me, I never seem to get up there anymore. At one stage I used to go through there quite often to Zimbabwe. Thanks for the information.

JoanYoung · Post by **JoanYoung** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:58 am

My goodness Erland, I hope I never come across one 2 metres long, I will die of fright. The biggest I have seen them is about 5 inches, some of them a bit fatter than others.
One interesting thing about the red one I noticed was that they seemed to twine around each other as if mating but it was their faces which were together not their rear ends as should be the case. I wonder about this strange behaviour, and want to see if I can find out why they do this.
You are correct in them being pre-historic, like cockroaches!!

Erland R.N. · Post by **Erland R.N.** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:49 am

Yes, amazing how animals in the past grew to such big sizes.
I found the german site about the species, and although this is mostly about keeping them as pets

there is also a list of tropical species:
http://www.diplopoda.de/html/artentrop.php
Many of those are from Africa.

The site http://www.diplopoda.de/ is only in german language though, but there are pictures with species names.

Erland

JoanYoung · Post by **JoanYoung** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:23 am

This is most interesting Erland : Centrobolus sp. is listed as "South Africa" but this picture was taken in Kwazulu Natal. The species listed as Kwazulu Natal Centrobolus ruber vulpinus does not have the black bands on the sides. If I look at the picture, I see that the one has a band of black almost right around it but the second one not. I wonder if it may be a difference between male and femal? The one looks more like Centrobolus splendidus found in Southern Mozambique. Kwazulu Natal is near Mozambique...can the two species be mating?
I do not see the brown or black one there....maybe you can contact them for me and see if they would be interested in these pictures of mine to add to the website. They are welcome to have copies of them. This is a great site for identification purposes. Thank you for posting the link to me.

Erland R.N. · Post by **Erland R.N.** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 11:27 am

Please send me a personal message Joan, with your email, and I'll send you mine. I actually myself thought about sending my pictures to the German site, but kind of forgot to do so.
I do read and write German fine

Erland

JoanYoung · Post by **JoanYoung** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:45 pm

Thanks Erland. I know too little German to be able to do this.