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miriam_eIt had been raining, and when it rains animals often seek shelter in this house. This morning I found the largest centipede I've ever seen in the bathroom. I know even larger ones exist, but this one was still a big deal for me. Very, very cool.
When I was little and playing in the garden I'd been "bitten" by the occasional centipede. It always stung badly, but wasn't serious. The reason I used quotes is that they don't actually bite you in the normal sense. Centipede mouths are quite small and inoffensive.
Their weapons are their first pair of legs, which are useless for walking, but are very powerful and contain poison glands. It is difficult to imagine the cascade of fortuitous mutations that would end up with poison glands in its legs, but centipedes are some of the earliest land animals. They were treading the dry land long before the first amphibians began to tentatively explore the land at the water's edge. So they had plenty of time for trial and error to refine their form to near perfection.
This poor centipede was tangled up in dust-bunnies and cobwebs. I lifted it up using a ruler and carried it outside where there would be enough light to get good pictures.
Once outside, I flipped it onto its back and carefully used a twig to pull away most of the stuff tangling its legs and head, then took these photos. I was surprised that it was unable to right itself. It seemed very sick. I helped it back onto its feet and urged it into the leaf litter near the house wall.
Concerned at its rather sad performance I went inside and mixed up a few drops of sugar water. Returning outside, I fetched the centipede from under the leaves and, using a matchstick, fed it some. That was interesting. I could feel the vibrations through the matchstick as the centipede grabbed it with its claws. Powerful indeed.
It is a pity I didn't get any pictures of its shiny, glossy, sleek back, but once I flipped it over it moved too quickly... though surprisingly sluggishly for a centipede. It may be dying. I'll keep an eye on the leaf-litter it crawled under, and if it is dead later I'll get some photos of its gorgeous back.
The biggest worry is all the little ants around this house. They are too small for a big centipede to defend itself against, and they could easily overwhelm it in its current state.
Edit: I looked later and it was pretty-much dead and the little ants had already begun attacking. Here is a photo of its back. See how beautiful this animal is. You can see a few of the ants remaining after I'd brushed most off. The front third of the centipede is already dead (the little ants didn't do that). The rest of the centipede will die slowly. After the photos I gave it back to the ants. Sad. But at least the ants will prosper from it.
I've always had something of a soft spot for centipedes. Female centipedes protect their eggs, curling around them, fending off predators, and periodically lifting each egg to its mouth and delicately licking it clean. Imagine the the complicated actions involved in that -- picking up and rotating a soft egg to wipe spores and other things off its surface. Amazing! Such complex behavior in such a tiny skull! Wonderful creatures!
Behaviors like these have long made me wonder if consciousness is almost universal in animals with complex nervous systems. It is difficult to imagine such behaviors being mindlessly robotic. The easiest way for them to evolve would be to via a small number of higher level urges on top of relatively low-level, hardwired systems. This would give such a creature a far greater repertoire of possible behaviors, and they would be easily modifiable to fit nearly any unforeseen circumstance. And this is the only way I've been able to explain some of the extraordinary feats spiders are capable of:
When I was little and playing in the garden I'd been "bitten" by the occasional centipede. It always stung badly, but wasn't serious. The reason I used quotes is that they don't actually bite you in the normal sense. Centipede mouths are quite small and inoffensive.
Their weapons are their first pair of legs, which are useless for walking, but are very powerful and contain poison glands. It is difficult to imagine the cascade of fortuitous mutations that would end up with poison glands in its legs, but centipedes are some of the earliest land animals. They were treading the dry land long before the first amphibians began to tentatively explore the land at the water's edge. So they had plenty of time for trial and error to refine their form to near perfection.This poor centipede was tangled up in dust-bunnies and cobwebs. I lifted it up using a ruler and carried it outside where there would be enough light to get good pictures.
Once outside, I flipped it onto its back and carefully used a twig to pull away most of the stuff tangling its legs and head, then took these photos. I was surprised that it was unable to right itself. It seemed very sick. I helped it back onto its feet and urged it into the leaf litter near the house wall.
Concerned at its rather sad performance I went inside and mixed up a few drops of sugar water. Returning outside, I fetched the centipede from under the leaves and, using a matchstick, fed it some. That was interesting. I could feel the vibrations through the matchstick as the centipede grabbed it with its claws. Powerful indeed.
It is a pity I didn't get any pictures of its shiny, glossy, sleek back, but once I flipped it over it moved too quickly... though surprisingly sluggishly for a centipede. It may be dying. I'll keep an eye on the leaf-litter it crawled under, and if it is dead later I'll get some photos of its gorgeous back.
The biggest worry is all the little ants around this house. They are too small for a big centipede to defend itself against, and they could easily overwhelm it in its current state.
Edit: I looked later and it was pretty-much dead and the little ants had already begun attacking. Here is a photo of its back. See how beautiful this animal is. You can see a few of the ants remaining after I'd brushed most off. The front third of the centipede is already dead (the little ants didn't do that). The rest of the centipede will die slowly. After the photos I gave it back to the ants. Sad. But at least the ants will prosper from it.
I've always had something of a soft spot for centipedes. Female centipedes protect their eggs, curling around them, fending off predators, and periodically lifting each egg to its mouth and delicately licking it clean. Imagine the the complicated actions involved in that -- picking up and rotating a soft egg to wipe spores and other things off its surface. Amazing! Such complex behavior in such a tiny skull! Wonderful creatures!
Behaviors like these have long made me wonder if consciousness is almost universal in animals with complex nervous systems. It is difficult to imagine such behaviors being mindlessly robotic. The easiest way for them to evolve would be to via a small number of higher level urges on top of relatively low-level, hardwired systems. This would give such a creature a far greater repertoire of possible behaviors, and they would be easily modifiable to fit nearly any unforeseen circumstance. And this is the only way I've been able to explain some of the extraordinary feats spiders are capable of:
- Consider the spider that was taken into space for observation (it was a science project suggested to NASA by a school kid). The spider's first attempts to spin a web in a weightless environment were a tangled failure, but this marvellous little creature eventually worked out how to create a normal web in a situation that no spider could ever have encountered. This was not the action of a mindless robot.
- Another stunning example is a spider that spun its web over my parents' driveway. Each morning and night the car would break the main vertical construction line anchoring the web to the ground and maintaining the shape of the web, leaving the web to flap uselessly in the breeze. Daily, the spider would rebuild the main tension line, only to have it rebroken. Eventually this canny little beast found a solution. It fastened the line to a pebble and hoisted it above the height of the car, so that the car passed under it without disturbing the web.
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Date: 2010-10-08 07:26 am (UTC)