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, one logged from Cameroon and the other with no country recorded at all. Beyond those, the wild record comes from recent Cameroonian field surveys, including five animals found only in mangrove forest in the Douala-Edéa reserve, and most of the rest comes from the people keeping it.

The name

Unusually for a wild-caught millipede, the binomial on this listing is a real, current name, though nobody has published a check of trade animals against it. 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 an actual 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 I have found no independent source that describes the texture.

Adults run to somewhere around 15 to 20cm in the trade's figures, and two UK sellers quote 25cm. The only published measurement I have found is older and larger than any of them: the animal Voges described in 1878, a single male now in Hamburg, was 265mm long with 71 body rings. One specimen is not a range, so the panel keeps the trade figure until a ruler goes across my own adults. 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 I have found no legal restriction on keeping or selling it anywhere. But it is a forest specialist known from Cameroon, with a single checklist record from Nigeria and almost no modern records anywhere, 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: rotted hardwood, leaf mould and soil, hardwood only and never pine, at least as deep as your longest adult is long, so 20cm or more. Thin bedding starves them slowly.

Hold the low to mid twenties, 22 up to 26°C, and keep humidity high, somewhere in the seventies. A British room sits below 22°C through the colder months, so add heat then, on a side wall and 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 are common on a newly arrived animal, and what they feed on is unsettled, so watch the numbers rather than treating. The defensive secretion has not been analysed for this species, but its order, the Spirostreptida, make benzoquinones, 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.

Our Matt Black millipede care guide covers the set-up in full, and the rest of our millipedes are 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, by Royal Mail Tracked 24, or Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm if you choose Next Day at checkout, and live arrival is guaranteed.