Giant Bat-Eating Centipede

If my fate is to die by being eaten by an animal, I'd prefer a vertebrate. Nothing personal...

I'm in love. Arthropods that eat vertebrates are the best.

The entire Life in the Undergrowth series with David Attenborough is total nature porn. Right up there with Blue Planet, Life of Mammals, etc. All highly recommended.

How big are those centipedes? The bats I'm familiar with would easily
fit in the palm of my hand, which still implies that those centipedes are
huge.

13 inch long bat eating centipede... Sounds delicious!

The video said the centipedes are 13" long.

The commentary at the beginning says that the centipedes grow to be 13 inches long.

So, not only is pharyngula becoming a porn palace with above-the-fold shots of entwining giant slug penises, you're now screening snuff films?

Man, you have really taken the mollusc sketch to heart.

Ethan, the video says they're about 13 inches long.

The biggest centipede I've ever seen was, at the very most, about five inches long. The idea of one almost three times as large is almost too much to bear.

I've been following this critter for a while, I just think it's pretty cool the way it justs hangs down and grabs one...

A paper is here... http://caribjsci.org/aug05/41_340-346.pdf and another video of a mouse being fed to a captive centipede is here.. http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/004745.html

The paper is ... very ... thorough in its descriptions of bats being ingested. Not for the sqeamish (although not as hard-core as self-hemipenectomy videos!)

That's one of the most fascinating and bizarre nature videos that I've ever seen. It has now been forwarded widely.

Holy crap, that was awesome! I had to watch it twice, and I made my labmates watch with me the second time.

Eeeeuch...can't STAND centipedes.
Why can't they all be nice and non-gross, like, say, millipedes?

...of course, ANYTHING that eats bats has a strike against it in my book.

How, exactly, does this pertain to evolution?

I'm having flashbacks to a David Cronenberg film.

The Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, and now this. Batman must be very worried.

Eww ... the bat-grabbing is one thing, but the beetles all over the floor and the way it just walked on top of them... ewwww

Centipedes freak me out. Now I have one more reason to be afraid of them. Slugs also freak me out, but for different reasons.

What is it about Pharyngula? Are you going into my anxiety closet or something by posting about slugs and centipedes?

Uh, yeah, I hope I never see that in real life.

I guess Batman's not an Entomologist.

Right. It helps to turn the sound on. :-)

I notice that most of you managed to avoid the issue of whether I was deaf or an idiot.

BTW, I showed it to my daughter last evening, earning major kudos. Sadly, it didn't make her regret her decision to major in chemistry. She doesn't start college until September though, so there's still time.