Matt Black Millipedes ( Treptogonostreptus Intricatus)

Two preserved specimens. That is the entire modern scientific record for this species in the global biodiversity databases, both sitting in a museum in Hamburg, both collected in Cameroon. Everything else known about the matt black millipede comes from the people keeping it.

At least the name is right

Unusually for a wild-import millipede, the binomial on this listing checks out. Treptogonostreptus intricatus is an accepted name in the millipede databases, the genus was erected by Hoffman in 1984, and the species goes back to Voges in 1878, which is why the authority takes brackets: he described it in a different genus and it has since been moved.

You may well meet this same animal elsewhere under Spiropoeus fischeri, and a couple of UK sellers use that name. Both are real Cameroonian species that occur in the same forests, so the relabelling looks like a genuine correction rather than a muddle, but it is worth knowing the two names are attached to the same product across the British trade.

What it looks like

Deep black with a low satin sheen rather than the mirror gloss of an African Giant. That contrast is really what the trade name is reaching for, and I would treat matt as a useful shorthand rather than a precise description, because no independent source has ever described the texture.

Adults run to somewhere around 15 to 20cm. Lifespan estimates in circulation contradict each other badly, from five years at the low end to ten at the high, and since none of them trace to anything solid I would plan for several years and leave it at that.

Worth knowing before you buy

A Cameroonian researcher surveying giant millipedes has proposed this species as Endangered. That is a proposal in a field report rather than a formal international listing, it comes from a single source, and there is no legal restriction on keeping or selling it anywhere. But it is a forest specialist known from one country with almost no modern records, and I would rather you had that in front of you than not. Captive-bred stock does exist for this species, which is not true of every Cameroonian millipede, and it is the better option where you can find it.

Setting up

The substrate is the meal, so make it deep and make it good: 8 to 12cm of rotted hardwood, leaf mould and soil, hardwood only and never pine. Thin bedding starves them slowly.

Hold the low to mid twenties, 22 up to 26°C, and keep humidity high, somewhere in the seventies. Any heating goes on a side wall, never below the tank, because a millipede that gets warm digs down to escape it and a floor heater removes the escape. Keep cuttlebone in permanently. Add soft fruit now and then and clear what is left.

They climb décor and will lever at a loose lid, so fasten it. Mites on a newly arrived animal are ordinarily harmless commensals and not a reason to treat anything. The defensive secretion is benzoquinone, which is what Spirostreptida make, rather than the hydrogen cyanide of the flat-backed millipedes. It browns skin, sometimes for weeks, and irritates it if it is left on, and in an eye it is a chemical burn that needs treating, so wash with soap after handling and before you touch your face. A worried millipede coils flat like a watch spring rather than balling up.

The rest of what we import and breed is in our millipede range.

Each animal ships bedded into moist substrate inside a vented tub, that tub set within a doubled outer box. We send Monday through Thursday only, keeping every parcel clear of the weekend, carried overnight on a tracked service that lands before the afternoon is out, and live arrival is guaranteed.