Invertebrates as Pets: Keeping and Caring for MIllipedes, Centipedes, Scorpions and Tropical Cockroaches

By Lenny Flank

A complete guide to keeping invertebrates as pets. Housing, feeding, handling. Includes information on popular species such as emperor scorpions, giant African black millipedes, Vietnamese giant centipedes, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lenny Flank
• Release date: Sep 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452343822

Lenny Flank

Longtime social activist, labor organizer, environmental organizer, antiwar.

Book preview

Introduction

Invertebrates rule the earth. Despite the attention given to the backboned vertebrates—the fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals—it is the invertebrates, animals without backbones, which have always dominated life on our planet. Invertebrate animals have flourished in every possible ecological niche, from the deepest depths of the oceans to the thinnest mountain air, from sweltering deserts to steaming jungles to freezing polar regions. Of the 26 major groups of animals, known as phyla, all but one consists solely of invertebrates. Of all the animals known to science, over 99% are species without backbones.

Today, invertebrates such as scorpions, millipedes, centipedes and tropical cockroaches make up one of the fastest-growing sections of the exotic pet trade. A wide variety of species are now inexpensively available from breeders, dealers and pet shops. So if you are looking for a fascinating pet that is unusual, easy to care for, doesn’t take up much room, and doesn’t require much maintenance, perhaps one of the several invertebrate species is for you.

This book provides biological information and care requirements for four commonly-kept varieties of invertebrates—centipedes, millipedes, scorpions and tropical cockroaches. These animals require only the most simple of accommodations and the most minimal of care. Once rare in captivity, they are now becoming more readily available, and the number of people keeping these unusual animals continues to grow rapidly.

Although these animals have many husbandry needs in common and there will thus be some overlap between sections, each section of this book is designed as an independent unit. If you are keeping only one variety of these animals, you will find all the care information you need in that particular section.

Biology

All of the animal species covered in this book are arthropods. In structure and behavior, they are very different from the more familiar vertebrate pets such as dogs, cats, hamsters or even snakes and turtles, and many of their life processes, such as respiration, circulation and reproduction, may be completely unfamiliar to most people. It is helpful in caring for these animals, then, to have at least a basic knowledge of how an invertebrate body works.

The most obvious characteristic of an invertebrate, as the name implies, is that it lacks a backbone. The more familiar petshop animals, such as dogs, cats, rodents, birds, reptiles and fish, are all vertebrates. Their internal skeleton is based on the long vertebral column, made up of a string of round hollow bones, and all of the limb bones, ribs and skull attach themselves to this vertebral framework. Invertebrates, however, not only lack a backbone, but they do not have any bones at all. Instead of a hard internal skeleton supporting and surrounded by soft body tissues, the arthropods have a soft inner body surrounded and supported by a hard protective exoskeleton, and thus they reverse the engineering plan found in the vertebrates.

The external skeleton of an insect or other arthropod is a marvel of engineering. It is lightweight but very strong, waterproof but still capable of allowing for the transfer of air and moisture in and out of the body. The rigid framework allows the muscles to be extremely powerful—much stronger, proportionately, than those of larger animals. If an adult human being were to have the same muscular strength, proportionately, as a typical-sized insect, he would be capable of lifting a loaded freight train with one hand, and then swinging it around his head.

The arthropods pay a heavy price for this superb protection, however. The cells making up the outer cuticle layer are dead and cannot divide, and this means that the exoskeleton cannot grow. As the arthropod grows and become larger, the exoskeleton becomes tighter and tighter, and it must be periodically shed and replaced by a new one if the animal is to grow. This process is known as ecdysis or molting, and it is one of the most vulnerable points in any arthropod’s life. During and immediately after the molting process, the arthropod is completely defenseless. The new exoskeleton is soft and pliable, leaving the animal vulnerable to predators until the new skeleton has had time to dry and harden. The molting process can also sometimes go awry, causing the animal to bleed to death or to be fatally trapped inside the old skeleton. During its lifetime, a large arthropod may molt its exoskeleton as many as seven or eight times.

The body processes of arthropods are very different from those of the more common petshop animals. Mammals and birds are said to be warm-blooded, which means that they can use internal body metabolism to maintain a constant high body temperature no matter what the outside temperature or environmental conditions might be. Arthropods, on the other hand, like all of the invertebrates (and most of the vertebrates), are said to be cold-blooded. The proper scientific designation for this is ectothermy, from the Latin words for outside heat, and this is a pretty good thumbnail description of the process. Ectotherms do not produce their own body heat through metabolism, but instead use outside sources of heat, such as direct sunlight or radiant heat from rocks or sand, to maintain their proper internal body temperatures.

Body temperature is an important factor for any living organism, since many biological processes depend on chemicals called enzymes, which work better at particular temperatures. Heat can in a sense be thought of as an arthropod’s fuel—the warmer its body temperature is, the more rapid its biological processes can occur and the quicker it can move. If cooled, however, its body processes slow down. In areas that are too cold, ectotherms cannot maintain a body temperature high enough to carry on their biological processes, and they will die. On the other hand, if the external temperature is too high, arthropods have no physiological method to reduce their body temperature to an acceptable level (they do not have sweat glands and cannot cool themselves by perspiring), and will also die.

While ectothermic strategy may seem inefficient, there is one distinct advantage that all ectotherms have over warm-blooded animals. Almost three-fourths of the food intake that a mammal or bird requires is used directly for maintaining the body temperature through the metabolic release of heat. Since ectotherms use outside sources of energy to maintain their body temperature, they do not need to devote any food energy to this end, and can therefore survive on a much smaller food intake than any warm-blooded animal can—less than one-fourth the amount of food that would be needed by a similarly-sized mammal. Most arthropods can survive well on just one good meal a week, and most can go for months if necessary without eating at all.

Taxonomy

All living things are classified by biologists into a hierarchical system of categories, sorted according to their biological characteristics (their morphology) and their evolutionary history (their phylogeny). This science of classification is known as taxonomy.

The basic unit of taxonomy is the species, which is biologically defined as a set of populations of organisms, the members of which are capable of exchanging genetic material under natural conditions by breeding to form fertile offspring. A few species are further broken down into subspecies, which are distinct populations that vary from each other in noticeable ways, but which are still capable of interbreeding with each other to form fertile offspring and are thus still members of the same species.

Taxonomically, a group of species that are closely related to each other through anatomy and common descent are placed together in the same genus (the plural is genera). Species that are more distantly related are placed together in successively higher and more inclusive categories. A group of related genera forms a family, and a group of related families forms an order. Groups of orders form a taxonomic class, and a group of related classes forms a phylum (plural is phyla). A group of related phyla form a taxonomic kingdom, which is the highest category of taxonomy.

Biologists refer to a particular species by its scientific name, which is made up of two parts. The first half of the scientific name consists of the organism’s genus designation, followed by its species name. If we are referring to a subspecies, then the scientific name will have three parts, consisting of the genus, species and subspecies designations.

All of the organisms in this book are members of the phylum Arthropoda, which contains all of the various invertebrate organisms that possess a stiffened exoskeleton, usually made of chitin, and a number of multi-jointed legs and other appendages. Included in the arthropods are such diverse animals as insects, spiders, crabs, myriapods and scorpions. Invertebrate animals that do not have stiff exoskeletons and jointed legs, such as sponges, snails, clams and squid, are not arthropods. The arthropods are by far the largest of all the existing phyla, with a variety of species that dwarfs all the other living groups.

The animals covered in this book fall into four distinct classes within the arthropod phylum. The centipedes are members of the class Chilopoda, which differs significantly from the class Diplopoda, where the millipedes are placed. The scorpions are placed in the class Arachnida along with the spiders, while the tropical cockroaches are members of the class Insecta, which, by itself, has more member species than all the other animal classes put together. Biologically, these four classes are as different from each other as birds are from frogs or fish.

While all of these tongue-twisting Latin designations and categories may seem like a waste of time, they are in fact vitally important to the hobby of keeping invertebrates as pets. For most people, all of these animals look superficially alike, and it