Millipede
Two pairs of legs to a segment and a diet of rotting wood and leaf litter. Slow, safe to handle, and most of its life happens under the substrate.
Overview
Millipedes are the opposite animal to the centipede they keep getting confused with. Two pairs of legs to a segment instead of one, no venom, no speed, and a diet of rotting wood and dead leaves. The African giant is the big one in the hobby and carries around 240 legs, which is a long way short of the thousand the name promises.
They last a long time for something that eats leaf litter. An American giant millipede has been recorded at 11 years and giant African millipedes are kept for five and more. They also grow in a way nothing else in the room does: a hatchling has seven segments and three pairs of legs, and it adds more segments and more legs at every moult for the rest of its life.
Temperament
Slow, and safe to hold with one caveat worth knowing. A millipede that feels threatened releases fluid from glands down its sides, and in several species that fluid contains benzoquinones, which stain skin brown and can burn it. Wash your hands afterwards and keep it away from your face.
Beyond that they ask for very little. Most of the animal's life happens under the substrate and out of sight, and one that has been buried for a week is usually moulting rather than ill.
Care and grooming
The substrate is the food. Decaying hardwood and leaf litter mixed through it, replaced as it gets eaten down, with soft fruit and vegetable scraps on top as a supplement rather than the main course.
Calcium is the thing keepers forget. The exoskeleton needs it, cuttlefish bone left in the enclosure is the usual way to supply it, and a weekly pinch of fish food or rabbit pellets covers the rest of the minerals. Keep it all damp, because a millipede loses water straight through its cuticle the same way a centipede does.
Living and exercise
Depth over floor space again. Four to six inches of substrate at minimum, more for a big African, because burrowing is not enrichment here. It is where the animal lives and where it moults.
Humidity high and steady, around 70 to 80 percent, with one corner kept wetter than the rest. Nothing sharp, nothing that can topple onto it, and a lid that holds the moisture in. They climb more than you would expect from something built like this, so the lid earns its keep.
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