Brown Centipede

• Its name means literally "life among the stones", from the Greek lithos, stone, and bios, life.
• It is identified by its reaction on being uncovered: it dashes for cover at full speed, far faster than other large Lithobius.
• Its bite can barely pierce human skin, but its venomous forcipules are highly effective against spiders, slugs, worms and flies.
• It is the centipede that turns up under any stone or flowerpot in Europe: reddish brown, fast, and with fifteen pairs of legs.
• It has neither a thousand legs nor a hundred: lithobiomorph centipedes always have exactly fifteen pairs as adults, and they add them progressively through the juvenile moults.
• It is a voracious predator of the soil: it eats insects, spiders, earthworms and slugs, and in a vegetable garden it is clearly beneficial.
• It self-amputates legs to escape and regenerates them over the following moults.
• Its cuticle has no waxy waterproof layer, so it loses water very quickly and depends on damp refuges; that explains why it is always seen under things and never in full sun.
• Its bite is harmless to people: its forcipules barely pierce the skin.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (myriapod)

Habitat & environment

Upper layers of the soil, especially under stones and rotting logs. It is eurytopic: from damp temperate woodland to urban gardens

Size at birth

It hatches with only seven pairs of legs and adds new segments and pairs at each moult, up to a maximum of fifteen

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (Lithobius forficatus); Lewis 2006, The Biology of Centipedes; Revista IDE@-SEA nº 32 (Orden Lithobiomorpha); Woodland Trust; Smithsonian, Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide

Best time: All year round, under stones, rotting logs and leaf litter