Bumblebee Millipede (Anadenobolus monilicornis)

Captive monkeys and birds have been recorded crushing these millipedes and working them through fur and feathers, probably as an insect repellent. The chemistry behind it is real: millipede benzoquinones have been shown experimentally to deter mosquitoes. Not many pet invertebrates arrive with a use case attached.

The animal

Anadenobolus monilicornis, described by Porat in 1876, family Rhinocricidae, order Spirobolida. The epithet comes from monile, a necklace, for the beaded look of the antennae.

Black to dark brown, ringed with bands running from yellow through to lime green, and finished with red to maroon legs and antennae. The legs are the part photographs undersell. Figures run from 25 to 30mm in the general references up to about 45mm long and a shade over 4mm wide in the Florida accounts, across roughly 45 body rings. You will also see 5 to 7cm quoted, and occasionally 10cm; those two have nothing behind them beyond repetition between shop pages.

The natural range is Caribbean: Hispaniola and Puerto Rico through the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad, coastal Venezuela and Suriname. Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, the Caymans and Florida are all introductions, moved around by people. Florida usually gets described as a 2001 arrival and an agricultural pest. The first record there was actually a single female in 1959, and the documented problem is houses, not crops, with thousands turning up on walls and ceilings in bad years.

Why it suits a first millipede

Small, hardy, prolific, and active enough to be worth watching. It eats the usual detritivore range and a good deal besides: leaf litter, dead wood, fallen fruit, seeds, fungi, and dead invertebrates when it finds them.

Breeding is where it earns its place. Females build nests and guard the eggs. Juveniles hatch white and stay more or less colourless for up to six months before the banding comes through, so a tub that looks like it holds nothing but adults may be full of young you have not noticed. Those juveniles feed on adult faecal pellets, which is how they acquire the gut bacteria they need to digest wood, so do not strip a breeding enclosure out. Keep the generations together and leave the mess alone.

Keeping them

5 to 8cm of crumbled hardwood and leaf litter over a soil base, damp through the depth without the top sitting wet. Hardwood only, no pine or cedar. Cuttlebone in permanently. Room temperature to gently warm, around 20 to 26°C, humidity in the seventies, and any heat coming from the side or from the room and never from a mat underneath the tub. There is more on building the bed in our millipede substrate guide, and rotten wood is the component people usually skip.

Alarmed, it curls down into a tight disc. It does not roll into a ball, which is a different group of millipedes altogether. Handled roughly it can let go of that benzoquinone fluid, which stains fingers brown and stings an eye badly. Wash before you touch your face and there is nothing else to worry about.

Both captive-bred and wild-collected animals circulate in the UK trade under this name, so we make no blanket captive-bred claim here. If you want to move up in size afterwards, the African Giant is the standard next animal, and the rest are in millipedes for sale.

We post early in the week, Monday through Thursday, so nothing sits over a weekend. Each order rides on wet moss in a perforated pot inside a doubled carton, and Royal Mail land it the following morning by one. The tub holds more than the listing says. Live arrival is guaranteed.