Millipedes: creepy crawlies

Well, it has been an interesting weekend up the BM Hill. My fascination with millipedes continues. I've seen so many of those monster millipedes now but have been quite hesitant to hold any of them. I know they cannot bite and are harmless but their defence mechanism is a body secretion that can supposedly irritate the hell out of predators.

But on Friday while hiking up the trail alone and coming across one of these millipedes again, something caught hold of me as I thought to myself: what the heck, here's a good time as any to get it out of the way. So I gingerly picked up the millipede at its mid-length section. At first I was surprised by its resistance as it tried to struggle free but I held it firmly. This is about the best shot that I could get with my mobile phone's camera.


It turned back to look at my hand. I was rather positive that it wanted to crawl up my hand. Anyway, you can see that my fingers were stained orange. Luckily, I was able to wash it off in the stream nearby.

And yesterday while going up the same trail with my wife, we came across our first sighting of a flat-backed millipede. It was about three inches long. This one proved to be less aggressive; in fact, it froze up when I tried to disturb it. You can see how it measured against the 50 cent coin.


Later, it apparently had enough of me and decided to curl up tightly with its head buried among its legs.