Giant Pink Leg Millipede (Mardonius Parillis Parillis)

The name at the top of this page is wrong, and it is wrong in three separate ways at once. It is worth explaining, because we have not seen another UK shop get this right and the animal deserves better than the label it carries.

Three errors in one name

Start with the spelling. The epithet everyone writes as parillis has one L, not two: parilis, Karsch, 1881. Then the genus. Mardonius is a real genus of Spirostreptidae, but parilis was moved out of it and the millipede databases now carry that combination as unaccepted, pointing instead to Spiropoeus fischeri Brandt, 1833. And then the trinomial. There is no such thing as parilis parilis; search the global biodiversity databases for it and you get nothing back.

Here is where it gets more interesting, and where we are going to stop short of giving you a clean answer. Spiropoeus fischeri is described as a jet-black animal with black legs. The pink-legged Cameroon millipede in the European trade is not obviously that. German keepers have an open discussion running about whether the two are even the same species, and the most careful continental dealers now sell it under open nomenclature, refusing to commit. That is the honest position and we are adopting it: this is a Cameroonian member of the family Spirostreptidae, widely and incorrectly traded as Mardonius parillis parillis, and nobody has established with any confidence what it is.

The animal

Long, cylindrical and dark bodied, with legs carrying a pink to rusty red flush that varies noticeably between individuals. Nobody has published whether that colour deepens with age or with successive moults, so we will not promise a particular intensity on a young animal. Adults commonly reach 15 to 20cm. Figures above 22cm circulate but nothing supports them.

Origin is Cameroon, and there it lives in the leaf litter of mature forest. Almost everything in this country arrives wild-collected rather than bred, and a Cameroonian field survey noted the species may be taken illegally for the international pet trade, so we would rather say plainly that yours is an imported animal than dress it up.

Keeping one

Depth is the main requirement. Give at least 8 to 12cm of substrate built from decayed hardwood, leaf mould and forest soil, because unlike most pets the bedding is also the diet and a millipede in thin substrate is a millipede that is not eating. Never softwood, never pine.

Warmth between about 22 and 26°C with humidity high, in the region of 70 to 80 per cent, and if you are heating, put the mat against a wall and never underneath. A millipede over a floor heater burrows downward looking for cool and cannot find it. Cuttlebone stays available permanently for the exoskeleton. Offer soft fruit occasionally and lift away anything left behind.

Two practical notes. They climb, so the lid needs to fasten rather than rest, and mites arriving on the animal are almost always harmless commensals rather than a problem to be treated. Their defence is a benzoquinone secretion, not the cyanide that flat-backed millipedes make, and it stains skin brown, irritates skin if it is left on, and in an eye it causes a chemical burn that needs treating rather than a sting you can rub away. Wash your hands. They coil into a flat spiral rather than a ball, which is normal and not distress.

Other Cameroonian imports and the captive-bred alternatives sit in our millipede range.

Millipedes leave packed into moistened substrate inside a ventilated tub, that tub cased within a second carton. We post early in the week and stop at Thursday, so nothing of ours travels across a Saturday. Delivery is overnight and tracked, arriving by early afternoon, and we guarantee the animal reaches you alive.