She told me she was walking by herself in the jungle and saw what she initially thought was a large, black snake moving through the leaves on the forest floor. She then noticed it had armoured plates and may have had numerous small legs. Both my mother and I are aware that there are giant centipedes in that region, but the size of it does not match up. She described it as being well over one foot thick and never saw its head nor tail even though she observed it for several minutes. She guessed it must have been at least twenty feet long.The world's longest (known) millipedes are only a little over one foot long. Further commentary at Fortean Times.
Related: The Mongolian Death-Worm.
Photo source (where there are other pix of Giant Millipedes).
My son had a science video about the huge insects of the carboniferous period in which they stated that such large insects and spiders could not exist today because the air lacks sufficient oxygen.
ReplyDeleteThese animals don't have lungs, but instead absorb oxygen through their skin. The larger the creature, the higher concentration of oxygen is needed.
My guess is that the lady saw a snake.
I would guess the same thing, Paul, and in all fairness the Fortean Times piece does conclude: "Moreover, for fundamental physiological reasons, no known species of terrestrial arthropod attains anything even remotely approaching those dimensions."
ReplyDeleteThe ending of the word "ão" suggests that it is a word in Portuguese.
ReplyDelete"ÃO" is one of the augmentative termination for words and in South America, in Brazil alone is spoken portugues.Os other countries are Spanish speaking.
exemple
In English : big foot
in Portuguese = pé(foot)zÂo = pézão
in spanish language the termination of the words augmentative is in "ion" , for exemple :
Nação = Nacion = Country
Minhocão = Big earthworm
Minhocão would be a Brazilian name ?
Hugs for you
PS = Sorry my english
In São(San)Paulo - Brazil , there is an overpass, famous, known as Minhocão.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com.br/images?hl=pt-BR&rlz=1T4GGLR_pt-BRBR307BR307&q=minhoc%C3%A3o+s%C3%A3o+paulo&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=vWz-TNvuMsKAlAeki9W9CA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQsAQwAA&biw=1251&bih=563
Interesting, Binho. The pix I can find on the web suggest that it does look a little like a large worm/snake winding through the city.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
#1) That bug skeeves me.
ReplyDelete#2) That's a man's hand. With long, painted, pointed fingernails.
We used to have one as a pet, actually. They are really sweet. I used to bathe it (they have tiny mites on them, and too many of them bother the millipede). When it munched on apples - you could hear it go "scrape, scrape".
ReplyDeleteBut then it died. :(