Outrageous centipede prices

My girlfriend attended the red deer reptile show
In Alberta, canada today. This scolopendra (gigantea) I believe(she didn't grab the Latin name) was asking $700CAD. Crazyness.

I hate when you find something you would buy for a fair price and they end up wanting 2 or in this case 8 or 9 times what it's worth.

And it's injured, it's not gigantea either. That one is from the Dominican Republic area, surrounding islands. Some people are confident that it's a large red form of Scolopendra alternans but I think it's still unknown, I haven't come across any formal papers on that. Has anybody here seen anything about that?

That's impressive looking!


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Wow that is impressive! I would like to have some of those! But I'm not ready to think, on average, they get bigger than gigantea or galapagoensis. I heard somebody say this also but they were trying to sell them to me so I couldn't trust what they were saying without some real evidence of it. How do they know this?, I don't think they really do. There just isn't a lot of organized reporting of the size of specimens out there, they are hard to measure. I would need to see something like a few different 12 to 14 inch specimens to be convinced of it. The Dominican Republic is a popular place as is Puerto Rico to the east where they are also found. Somebody told me they fly down there and collect them from under boards and other junk, he said he's seen some big ones but not as big as some S.A. pedes he's seen and had. With all the traveling there, why not more pics of huge specimens of the species? It doesn't make much sense to me. And still, no ruler by that thing, that could be a 5 inch hand, which would still mean a big pede of course. But I keep an open mind with that kind of thing, maybe, I'd like to see "ruler" pics though, that makes it real. It's really hard to capture the size of pedes with a camera. I also question whether or not galapagoensis is even in the hobby after all, or if there are some ID problems, small morphological differences that aren't relevant. The ways galapagoensis is currently distinguished from gigantea are by smooth antennomere count and femoral spurs, or the lack of. Some pedes I have were shipped in as gigantea and have the femoral spurs gigantea is said to have, but they have the smooth antennomere count of galapagoensis, and called galapagoensis in the hobby but, imo they may not be, that's something for another thread though.

In Japan, this centipede is sold in $900 to $1400......


<edit> prices.

Son of a diddly!!!! I've heard the same about the south amer pedes sold there. What do those go for there? Also, isn't the color red popular in Japan? I wonder if that's another reason for high prices there for those. Color makes such a big difference. If hardwickei was solid brown, it would just be another pede.

oh man... adult galapagoensis and other south american centipedes are around 400-600 USD in South Korea. it looks like some people smuggled and succeeded to breed them. gigantea robusta centipede was aroung 1500 USD like 2 or 3 years ago and even that was extremely hard to find but now south american centipedes are easy to find in korea . i dont know why it is hard to find south american centipedes in US. it seems like importing centipedes are legal in US.

Somebody told me there is somebody there that did breed at least one south american pede somewhere in Asia but I forgot where it was. Which one are you calling "robusta", I see different species called robusta. I have a hard time getting myself to pay more than $150 for any invert. Importing pedes is legal in the US but I think the popular, legal export in south america is what shuts down for a while so that's when it's hard to get stuff, seems so anyway. I have a species of south american pede juvs that I'm about to put up for sale here. The one I have has been called "robusta", now it's called galapagoensis but it has a gigantea feature on the legs so I'm not sure what it is. Pedes aren't as popular here as in Asia though.

That's interesting because the babies I had over here looked just like that with the strange shaped head and they ate the mother too, it's natural. But the ones over here are what people are calling galapagoensis because of some diff colors and maybe tiny physical differences which may only be a bit of polymorphism within the same species. I really think there are some ID probs going on, or maybe species that are VERY closely related, it's confusing. Same look to the babies


but from this

i think its a great marketing plan to show a big pede next to a tiny hand. deliberately leave out a ruler or measuring tool or anything to show scale. find the person with the smallest hands you can possibly find and pay them $5 to take a picture with your centipede, genius !

Greenjewls said:

i think its a great marketing plan to show a big pede next to a tiny hand. deliberately leave out a ruler or measuring tool or anything to show scale. find the person with the smallest hands you can possibly find and pay them $5 to take a picture with your centipede, genius !

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That cracked me up lol

Burger King employs this strategy in they're burger commercials...

Clearly people with small hands get the most out of giant centipede ownership.

I suppose if people are willing to pay thousands for a cut piece of compressed coal mounted on a ring some poor schlep will shell out big money for a centipede.

zonbonzovi said:

I suppose if people are willing to pay thousands for a cut piece of compressed coal mounted on a ring some poor schlep will shell out big money for a centipede.

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Words of wisdom...

"Schlep", alright, increasing my vocabulary here! Heard it many times but never really knew what it meant. I think that's the case for a lot of us. We hear and read words but don't know exactly what they mean. Maybe it's "mukade mon" mentioned in another thread that attracts attention to centipedes, tradition. I haven't looked into that much, never heard of it until I saw it in that older thread. http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/sho...se-show-me-a-picture-of-Scolopendara-japonica Or does it have anything to do with it? Like I said, I haven't looked around to check.

I've owned one of these. I am also somewhat privy to how pricing is established. Yes, the end suppliers at the expos must profit and will adjust pricing accordingly but the end price is not astronomically higher than the unit cost they paid to acquire them. These pedes are big and thick; mine was 10-10.5" and I don't believe it was full grown.

Looks like the one i had.

Was curious about the hype of this centipede regarding pricing, identification, claiming to be giants by suppliers. Just got one to check it out.

Though i never did know the standard to calculate their size, via body? or antennae to last pair of legs?

Whatever outcome there might be, i certainly like em

Nice pede!, that'd be a solid 8 incher, prob a little more, you measure from head to the last body segment. There was a time when these were shoved in the subspinipes group, I think. I read it in a document somewhere but the pede wasn't described in the document, nothing about colors that would point to this pede, just said that it was on Hispaniola and other islands. I can't think of any other pede it would be. But the group was dissolved and the pedes in the group were reclassified, at least the others were. Still could be a big red form of alternans I suppose, who knows, maybe somebody does but I'm going to need to see documentation to be convinced of any claims.