Amazonian Giant Centipede

Scolopendra gigantea is the largest centipede in the world, with verified specimens reaching 30 cm. Native to the rainforest and dry forest of Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia, and the Caribbean coast of South America. Like all centipedes, the front pair of legs is modified into venom-injecting forcipules that can pierce vertebrate skin. The venom contains a complex protein cocktail combining a neurotoxin, a cardiotoxin, and an analgesic peptide that locally numbs the bite — effective enough that prey animals don't always flinch hard enough to escape. Diet is broad and unusual for an arthropod: documented prey includes large insects, spiders, lizards, mice, frogs, snakes, tarantulas, and most famously bats. In a 2005 paper, Venezuelan researchers documented S. gigantea hanging from cave ceilings, holding on with rear legs, and snatching flying bats out of the air with the front legs and forcipules. The centipede then climbs back to the wall and eats the bat head-first while still clinging upside down. Bites in humans are intensely painful and cause swelling, fever, and tachycardia, but human deaths are exceptionally rare; one historic case from Venezuela involved a four-year-old child.