Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi. I have a 2 part post here.

First, I've been on a major quest for female African black giant millipedes. I ordered 15 blacks from LLL Reptile and all were male. I then went to an import store and sexed probably 35-40 as all males as well.

I can see wild collection of giant blacks as being seasonal. They are probably easier to find when it is rainy. My guess is that collectors come across more males than females. I could see the males out cruising around for a mate and the females laying eggs.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? I spent a lot on that first group in an attempt to get some females and I was totally out of luck!

Part 2: After handing 60 african giant black millipedes in the last few days, I've noticed an interesting skin reaction I've never seen before. Almost immediately after handling them, their poison secretion stains my hands! I've worked with these guys on kids demos and stuff. I've even gotten their yellowish poison secretion on my skin with no results.

However, after man-handling these guys to sex them, my fingers turn maroon! It looks like I have burns all over the place. This appears to be a completely external reaction and I'm posting this out of curiosity and not concern. This stuff certainly isn't washing away as I've taken numerous showers and washed my hands many times in the last three days. Has anyone else experienced this? I'll take pics, but the color is turning more brown now. It was quite amazing when it was literally a burned skin maroon color.

I find it really odd that you can not find a female, especially at LLL. No offense, but are you sure you are checking right? WC millis sometimes are missing a lot of legs. IME, in breeding or finding millis the ratio is usually 2:1 to 4:1 females to males. Finding a male should be problem.

Although I havent kept many millies, Ive found the problem occurs finding males - any I come across, even other people's mills seem to be mostly female. Ive also read in a few invert books that males are in fewer numbers.

As for the staining, I believe the mills can adjust the amount and strength of the secretions depending how stressed or anxious they are. This is not a scientifically proven fact, its my own theory so if anyone can prove it right or wrong please do lol but Ive deduced it from my own experience - sometimes I can have no reaction to a mills secretion and sometimes I come out in blisters from the very same animal, depending what I consider the amount of stress the mill is under at that time.