#bug ethics

of course it stresses the bug out & I have some long post where I talk about this & related issues, but when you see me handling and messing with wild bugs (or even my pet ones, it’s not like captive insects are domesticated or tame) I weigh how badly I want/need to do that versus the outcomes on the animal:

I consider these questions:

does the animal need help immediately?

will handling hurt the animal even if I don’t intend it?

can anyone learn from handling this? (myself, others I’m with, followers online)

handling wild cockroach briefly for a photo? not necessary, but a good educational experience & helps others enjoy a creature they might not otherwise. she fluttered away a second later unharmed. I didn’t pick up any others of the same species that night since I already got my selfish wish to Hold Beast: the rest can be left alone.

picking up Alfonso because I need to clean his bark slab? yep, that should be fine, I’ll set him down in a moment & grab a photo first

picking up a Tenodera mantis? it’ll not be super thrilled with it but they often chill out in a matter of minutes and treat my hand like a branch. if not and it’s trying to attack or flee constantly, I’ll let it leave.

picking up a frog/slug/snail? probably not ok unless you’re moving it across a path or just holding it very briefly. their slime coat reacts poorly to human hand secretions.

all of them, but none of them like it.

and many of them would try to hurt me if I did! that would probably be very painful because many of them are venomous.

I first saw your centipede posts months ago and was enthralled with these little guys off the bat. After a ton to research on all things centipede and the encouragement of a close friend, I decided to get my first centipede about a month ago and so far it going great! I absolutely love him/her/them with all my heart and am constantly fascinated with their behavior and habits.

I also work in veterinary medicine as a licensed technician (and am in school working on my undergrad degree to hopefully become a doctor of veterinary medicine someday) and would love to be able to one day provide care for more exotic animals including invertebrates. Thank you for igniting a passion for learning more about inverts. ❤️🪲🪱🦂🦗

while I’m happy that you did your research, bought a captive bred (or at least CH) specimen, and enjoy your centipede (which is more than most people do) this still made me a bit sad to hear because I don’t want my posts to encourage keeping centipedes without breeding them.

I don’t mean to single you out specifically, especially since you seem like a very responsible keeper, so speaking in general to everybody I really wish more centipedes were captive bred, and that includes breeding specimens which are themselves CBB. I see this a lot with the biggest, fanciest, rarest mantises, amblypygi, and centipedes: wild or first generation CBB end up being single “trophy pets” that are not bred (either keeper can’t find more, or isn’t interested) and therefore just take away from the hobby rather than adding to a stable captive population.

in the case of South American giant Scolopendra like your galapagoensis, captive breeding can be serious because they have very short lifespans: about ~5 years is what I hear from other keepers, and females have only one large clutch in their lives because she dies for her offspring to consume. fortunately their size, rarity, and the beefy price tag that accompanies those traits make them a species breeders are willing to produce these days, but even then there can’t be more than a handful of breeding adults with a fairly limited gene pool.

it’s probably even worse for species like S. polymorpha and S. dehaani which are only wild caught and almost never intentionally captive bred. these are the “cheap” centipedes in the US, with polys being caught in the southwest deserts and dehaani being imported in bulk from Vietnam. these are the species novice keepers get, and never breed, and that continues to fuel demand for collection. there isn’t any data on how collection impacts wild populations but in my opinion collection is never necessary when captive breeding is possible (even if it can be tedious in centipedes).

anyway, I hope I did not come off as attacking you—you are more responsible than most, and I’m sure your centipede will have a good life. but I feel very guilty when I hear “I love your posts so I got myself a centipede!” because that centipede is so rarely captive bred, and even if it is, it probably won’t ever get to contribute diversity to the captive population.

I’d started keeping Scolopendra myself with the intent to breed and support captive populations, and a combination of naivety and bad luck meant almost all of my centipede projects failed. I have no plans to breed centipedes for at least several more years. a majority of the videos I post are fairly old, and I only have a handful of centipedes remaining. I often wonder if I should just stop posting about anything scolo-related because I don’t really want to inspire others to keep centipedes if they’re not going to breed them. I do not think this is exaggeration or “gatekeeping” because not breeding animals is how they become imperiled in the wild and extinct in captivity at the same time (many tarantulas and reptiles have experienced this). to me, indirectly supporting that outweighs what I’m actually trying to do—inspire people to stop being scared and enjoy arthropods, in captivity or in the wild.

yep! blue death feigning beetles are another one that gets me a little worried every time I see huge tubs full of them on bug sellers’ pages. they make good pets* but are difficult to captive breed, so all those thousands are probably collected from the wild. maybe it would be okay if there was actual research on either of these species to show that their wild populations can withstand such collection, but unfortunately I don’t think either is studied well enough for that.