{"id":599499,"date":"2026-08-20T20:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T20:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599499\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T20:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T20:20:08","slug":"its-as-long-as-a-2-litre-soda-bottle-has-21-legs-is-venomous-enough-to-kill-a-bat-and-a-small-child-and-has-eaten-flesh-from-a-human-corpse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599499\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s as long as a 2 litre soda bottle, has 21 legs, is venomous enough to kill a bat &#8211; and a small child \u2013 and has eaten flesh from a human corpse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The biggest centipede in the world is the aptly named Amazonian giant centipede,\u00a0 measuring up to an incredible foot long (30cm or 12 inches) or more.<\/p>\n<p>The Amazonian giant centipede is made up of 27 segments, with 21 pairs of legs &#8211; the first pair of which delivers the deadly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/poisons-vs-venom-vs-toxin\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">venom<\/a> to its victims.<\/p>\n<p>As it&#8217;s name suggests it lives in Amazon &#8211; but is also found in other parts of South America and the south Caribbean.<\/p>\n<p>How venomous is the Amazonian giant centipede?<\/p>\n<p>This centipede packs quite a punch. Armed with a powerful venom, the giant centipede preys on a variety of other animals, including other invertebrates and small vertebrates. <\/p>\n<p>One study examined its predation on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/bat-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bats<\/a>, suggesting that it could hang from a cave ceiling and inject its venom into a bat. Although the measured bat wasn\u2019t quite twice its weight, it was a close thing \u2013 and this centipede has separately caused the death of a human child, and eaten flesh from a human corpse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Top image by Tod Baker from Tianjin, China, CC BY-SA 2.0 <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest centipede in the world is the aptly named Amazonian giant centipede,\u00a0 measuring up to an incredible&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-599499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}