Agressive behaviour from African Giant Blacks

Crunchie

Arachnoangel
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 1, 2004
Messages
852
Hi all,

This is a quick post to illuminate something my friend witnessed not so long ago. I advised him to post his observations here but sadly he doesn't have a lot of time on his hands.
Anyway I got an odd text from him the other night claiming he had just watched his male Giant African Black millipede attempt a rape on a smaller African bronze (the AGB is around 10" and chunky and the bronze around 5" and slimmer).
I thought I'd better post this up as I've never heard of the AGB's being aggressive in mating before and maybe folks should think twice about keeping lone males in with other fairly large species of millipede.
Anyway Sam phoned me on Monday night and bescribed what he saw so I'll try and sum it up - First he noticed the male AGB approach the bronze which instantly curled up. He then said the AGB clumbered over the bronze and successfully prized it apart so it was straight out. The AGB then began squeezing its legs (I'd seen it do this to his female AGB but it died some months ago). Somehow or other the bronze managed to wriggle free anddarted off under a clump of moss, this was seconds before my friend had decided to stick a hand in and attempt a rescue. Hoping that that bronze wasn't injured he lifted the clump of moss to find his pair of bronze so he was unsure as to which one was the subject of his AGB's attempted rape. He noticed the male bronze had lost an anttenae which he hadn't noticed before.

Is it the season? :? Talking to my friend about it he seemed rather put out and said to me "what I saw weren't pretty". I can imagine :(
Maybe it's notthebest idea to keep male AGB's on their own though I've never heard of them being so aggresive before, maybe my friend just got an "unhinged" one? :confused:
 

Magician

Arachnosquire
Old Timer
Joined
Jan 1, 2005
Messages
130
Well

I have two female A. Gigas; and they both will nibble on me, it feels like someones pinching me very hard over and over..I've no experince with keeping other milli speices, but they tend to do this when they were unhappy about being picked up- aka oozing and scerteing and pooping all over me. Maybe there all little terrors in disquise? :D
 

Wade

Arachnoking
Old Timer
Joined
Aug 16, 2002
Messages
2,929
It may be that the two species are related closely enough that the AGB would attempt to mate with the bronze, but not closely related enough that he would recogonize the chemical signals that might have turned him off had it been an unreceptive female of his own species.

Season may have something to do with it too. If the two species have different seasons, the AGB male may simply not comprehend an unreceptive female.

Annother reason not to mix species if you can avoid it.

Wade
 
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