How many legs does a centipede have

July 26th, 2007
Leave your comment Posted by umar
Published in textblog

centepedeAsma asked this from me, and although I am no biologist, here is the answer.

In Latin, “centum” means 100 and “ped” means foot, so literally speaking, a centepede would have 100 legs. However, this is not entirely true.

Centepedes always have odd pair of legs, ranging from 15 to more than 171 pairs. The most common centepedes posses 15 pairs of legs.

So Asma, next time you see a centepede, don’t go round screaming and yelling. I suggest holding it from tail and counting its legs. Let me know how many did you count before fainting away.

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  • you solved a major confusion in my head ;-)
  • Adnan Siddiqi
    does it matter? the thing which matters most that how many legs does he use. Since I keep listening "Murgha k ek taang" so I believe that other leg of Murga is useless or he doesn't know the purpose of other leg. :-)
  • BTW: There is another invertebrate of the centipede family known as millipede. As far as I remember, Centi is used in SI units as hundredth(.01) part of something and Milli as thousandth(.001) part of something, using SI prefix like centi and milli for an invertebrate having more than one legs doesn't make sense, agreed?. Why don't the biology nomenclature be streamlined with the prefixes used by rest of this technological aware world, I mean the names should be hectopede(for invertebrate presently called centipede), kilopede(for millipede), megapede & gigapede etc.....for more advanced versions of pedes. ;)
  • a/c to wikipedia House Centipedes have 15 pairs of legs and believe me I have seen them they are very freaky looking creatures ew!!
  • Ah, reminds of that centipede joke I heard sometime back. It went something like ... never ask a centipede to go any place with you cuz it takes ages for it just to get its boots on ! :P
  • you are welcome asma! I obviously posted it before sleeping and after waking up.
  • @waqas : or may be during sleep ^_^
  • Lolzzz :-D

    Thanks dude - you solved a major confusion in my head ;-)
  • waqas
    And by the way, did you post this before or after sleep? :)
  • waqas
    The 15-171 range doesn't seem definite. Most of the online texts including Wikipedia, Encarta and Britannica articles have separate values.

    Note that this range is for adult centipedes. Scutigera coleoptera (the American House Centipede) for example hatches with only 4 pairs of legs.
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