With the improvement of living standards, people's pursuit of spiritual life is getting higher and higher, coupled with the increasing pressure of life, the change of traditional family structure, pets have become the spiritual dependence of many people. Cats and dogs, which we are familiar with, have been upgraded from the roles of caretakers and mice in the early years to "spiritual companions", becoming playmates at the owner's leisure.
Because different people's hobbies are different, the types of pets are becoming more and more abundant, people have not only limited to cats, dogs, rabbits, ornamental fish, turtles and other traditional pets, but also raised spiders, lizards, snakes, centipedes, etc., and even some people also raise cockroaches as pets, and these pets are often called "exotic pets", that is, pets that are different from conventional pets.
With the increasing development of international logistics and transportation, some people have set their sights on pets that are not available in China, such as the poisonous black widow spider, the Venezuelan pink-footed bird spider with a foot span of up to 30 cm, the "strange fish" alligator eel that frequently appears in various places, and the huge python. According to the "2018 China Pet Industry White Paper", the number of pet owners in mainland China is as high as 73.55 million, of which 17.07 million keep "exotic pets".
Speaking of "exotic pets", according to media reports, on November 20, the mainland's Haikou customs intercepted five centipedes 15-20 centimeters long when inspecting mail entering the country, and after expert identification, these five centipedes are the largest of the known centipedes in the world, known as the Galapagos giant centipede.
The word "Galapagos" is familiar because the famous biologist Charles Darwin's expedition to the Galapagos Islands in 1835 also prompted him to propose the famous theory of biological evolution, which was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1978. The Galapagos Islands because of the diversity of climate and volcanic landforms of the special natural environment, the island grows a large number of exotic flowers and plants, but also gathers a large number of rare birds and monsters, a variety of rare animals in other places, the most famous is the huge Galapagos tortoise, the Galapagos tortoise is said to be the longest life on the earth, the life span is estimated to be up to 200 years, its body length is 1.2 meters, adult males can weigh up to 272-320 kilograms.
There are huge tortoises, naturally there are huge centipedes, the entire morphological length of the Galapagos giant centipede can grow to 30-40 cm, and the largest Galapagos giant centipede currently caught reaches 62 cm in length. And the Galapagos giant centipede not only grows big, but also super toxic.
Centipedes belong to what we often call "one of the five poisons", the other four poisons are geckos, scorpions, snakes and toads, since they are among the five poisons, their toxicity is naturally not weak. In the mainland, the distribution of centipedes is not extensive, only limited to South China, the south of Kangdian District and central China, common are less spiny centipede, spiny centipede, multi-spinous centipede, interfoot centipede, red centipede, Mar's centipede, etc.
The more famous of the mainland centipedes is the less spiny centipede, before a blogger was bitten by the less spiny centipede, according to his description, after being bitten, half of the body is numb, and there is a feeling of cold and heat, the bitten thumb is also swollen to twice the original size, and basically lost intuition, until 7 hours later, the thumb's perception began to recover, numbness also faded to the forearm of the bitten arm.
Centipede poison is mainly used to catch prey, the larger the centipede catches the larger the prey, so the stronger the toxicity, the largest centipede on the mainland is usually considered to be a red dragon centipede, the body length can grow to 20-30 cm, "Geo China" program team invited CCTV scientific consultant Mr. Zhao Li to Yunnan to find this red dragon centipede, when they used chicken blood and internal organs to capture a 26 cm long red dragon centipede. In 2018, researchers at the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China put a red dragon centipede and a guinea pig weighing 15 times the weight of a centipede together, and after the two met, the centipede pounced fiercely on the mouse, and the mouse was declared dead in less than 30 seconds.
But the domestic red dragon centipede is also good, less spiny centipede, although the toxicity is quite strong, but compared with the Galapagos giant centipede is a little bit of a witch, after all, the toxicity of domestic centipedes can only rank tenth in the global centipede ranking, and the toxicity of the Galapagos giant centipede can be ranked first, if bitten by the Galapagos giant centipede, the bitten person will show fever, dizziness, headache, nausea, severe cases and even convulsions, coma and other systemic symptoms, if not treated in time may also be life-threatening.
What do big, poisonous centipedes buy for?
The Galapagos giant centipede is very poisonous, what is the use of buying it back? In most cases, it should be bred as pets, and it is okay to raise pets, but raising exotic species as pets is not a good habit, such as the frequent appearance of alligator eels in various places this year, a lake mixed with one or two alligator eels It will not take long to eat all the other fish in the lake, and there are even incidents of children playing in the lake being bitten by alligator eels. Crocodile eels appear as pets in natural waters, either by escape or by human release, but in either way they can have serious effects on the local natural environment.
A fish that can only live in the water still has such a big harm, that can crawl everywhere, the large size, and the highly toxic giant centipede once escaped or released into the natural environment, the harm caused by it is completely unimaginable. In 2010, there were reports of a woman in Qingdao accidentally stepping on a centipede bite while walking outside at night, knowing that Qingdao has exceeded the boundaries of centipede production under natural conditions.
There is also a theory that the Galapagos giant centipede was bought not for farming, but for wine. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that centipedes have the effect of stopping spasms, detoxifying and dispersing knots, channeling and relieving pain, and it is rumored that the medicinal effect of using Galapagos giant centipede to brew wine is stronger than that of domestic "little centipede".
There are two ways to make wine with centipedes, one is to scald the centipede with boiling water beforehand, and then insert thin bamboo pieces sharpened at both ends into the head and tail of the centipede, straighten the centipede, dry it and use it. The other is to place live centipedes directly into bottles containing liquor. After the centipede is put in, seal the bottle and soak for 25 days before drinking. However, it should be noted that there can be no air left on it when soaking wine, because insects have relatively little demand for oxygen, and if there is a lot of air left, the larger centipede may not die, and it may be bitten when opening the bottle cap. Previously, there were media reports that some people used live snakes to make wine, and after soaking for a period of time, they were bitten by snakes when they opened the cap of the wine bottle.
It should be reminded that whether it is bought as a pet or bought to make wine, buying live animals from abroad to return to China is not a behavior worth advocating, and it may lead to the invasion of alien species if you are not careful.