Scaring Centipedes are beautiful!

One day I was walking barefooted on the cellar of the house. I felt a pinching pain on one of my toes. I found a vermin move away from my foot. It is the Common Centipede (Scutigera forceps, 'Pooraan' in Tamil)! Though its name implies that it has hundred legs, it has only fifteen pairs of legs.
It is a nocturnal, carnivorous and venomous arthropod. It lurks at daytime in dark, moist or damp places like that of house drains and stones. It eats insects, earthworms and spiders. With its fangs it bites the prey and injects venom into it before taking it. As it grows up with each moulting a new body segment is added up. Males deposit their spermatophore on a web that they spin. Females take them up and lay eggs. Young centipedes hatch out and grow with their mother's care.

Here, there are more fallacies attached to the centipede bite than in anywhere. People say that a bitten victim shall have recurring skin rashes on each new moon day. That too, it is said, to resemble like that of centipedes! When bitten by a centipede, application of Tincture Iodine at the site of the bite is the first aid. Centipedes bite only when they are disturbed.
Though scaring by their bites, these centipedes are wonderful creatures to look at - their having neat order of segments presented in attractive colors!