What It's Like to Experience the World's Worst Sting, From a Giant Venomous Centipede

In 1983, American entomologist Justin Schmidt created his pain index for insect stings. His four-level scale moves from the red fire ant, “sharp, sudden, mildly alarming… like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch,” to the northern warrior wasp, “torture…You are chained in the flow of an active volcano. Why did I start this list?”

Only three species made level four: the northern warrior wasp, the bullet ant, and the tarantula hawk. However, Schmidt’s scale only applies to stinging insects in the order Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps). If he had branched out to include centipedes, I have no doubt he’d have needed a fifth level for his scale.

Giant venomous centipedes

Asia has several species of giant venomous centipedes (Scolopendra), and all deliver excruciatingly painful stings. It’s a sting rather than a bite because of the delivery method. Giant centipedes inflict their sting through forcipules, appendages attached to the head that look like fangs. They pinch their prey (or — in a subtle piece of foreshadowing — innocent people’s feet) with these adapted front legs, piercing the skin and delivering a potent dose of venom. This toxic soup of cytotoxins, mycotoxins, and neurotoxins destroys cells, damages muscle tissue, and disrupts nerve signals. In prey species, the venom often paralyzes the animal. The larger the centipede, the more powerful the sting.

Giant centipedes will eat anything they can overpower, including tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, rats, lizards, and even birds.

A Scolopendra species from Da Lat, Vietnam. Locally called “White Beard,” it was the length of my forearm and is so little studied that it likely has no species name. Photo: Martin Walsh

Human victims of centipede stings are very rare. Scolopendra species are huge, obvious, and disgusting (admittedly subjective). If you see one, you avoid it. However, they are also fast and aggressive. They will strike if threatened and are sensitive to vibrations. If you’re unlucky, you get to experience why one of their Thai names translates to “Seven Days of Crying.”