Millipedes
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40 free Millipedes trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Millipedes have been walking the Earth for more than 400 million years, and almost nothing about them is as simple as it looks. Their name makes a promise their bodies rarely keep, their defences are a chemistry lesson, and new species still turn up in caves, mountains and mining shafts. This quiz turns the best fun facts about millipedes into questions: how they grow, feed and protect themselves, which animals hunt them or borrow their chemicals, the record holders and prehistoric giants, and the surprising places millipedes appear in human life, from railways to arcade games. It suits curious nature lovers, students and teachers, and anyone who has found a millipede under a log and wondered what it was. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing far more than when you started.
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Q 01Which pop star had a new twisted-claw millipede from Tennessee named after her by a scientist fan?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift got the honour because her music carried lead author Derek Hennen through graduate school, and the species lives only in a state where she once lived.
Q 02In which country was the first millipede with over 1,000 legs found, deep inside a mining drill hole?
Australia
Australia yielded the record-breaker in 2020, when a female with 1,306 legs came up from 60 metres underground, more legs than any other animal on Earth.
Q 03The word millipede comes from Latin words with which meaning, a promise almost no species keeps?
Thousand feet
Thousand feet is the literal meaning of mille and pes, yet common species have between 34 and 400 legs.
Q 04Which animals of Madagascar bite toxic millipedes, rub them through their fur and seem to enjoy a buzz?
Black lemurs
Black lemurs nip a millipede until it oozes its defensive chemicals, smear them over their bodies and appear to enjoy the psychoactive effect.
Q 05Which notorious poison do many flat-backed millipedes release as a gas when attacked?
Cyanide
Cyanide, with its bitter-almond smell, is made by millipedes of the order Polydesmida, the largest order with more than 5,000 species, many of them brightly coloured as a warning.
Q 06What unusual trick do Motyxia millipedes use at night to warn predators that they are loaded with poison?
Glow in the dark
They glow in the dark, and the brighter a species shines the bigger its poison glands, so the light works as an honest warning to hunters.
Q 07A newly hatched millipede typically has how many legs, gaining more each time it moults?
Six
Six legs, in three pairs, is the usual starting kit, and each moult adds new segments and legs, a way of growing called anamorphosis.
Q 08Which country gives its name to the invasive millipede whose swarms make trains slip near Adelaide?
Portugal
Portugal lends its name to the millipede, which arrived around 1953, perhaps in ships' ballast; Adelaide's suburban trains now carry brushes to sweep it off the rails.
Q 09A big Tanzanian millipede named in 2011 is commonly known as the wandering leg what?
Sausage
Sausage is a straight translation of its scientific name, Crurifarcimen vagans, and the 16-centimetre animal made a list of the top 10 new species of 2012.
Q 10How many legs does a millipede carry on most body segments, twice as many as a centipede has?
Four
Four legs per ring is the group's trademark, because each ring is really two segments fused together, which is why the class is called Diplopoda, or double foot.
Q 11What do most millipedes eat, a diet that makes them important recyclers of the forest floor?
Decaying leaves
Decaying leaves and other dead plant matter are the staple, and a single species can get through as much as a tenth of all the leaf litter where it lives.
Q 12Which company released the arcade shooter Millipede as a sequel to its bug-blasting hit Centipede?
Atari
Atari followed Centipede a year later, swapping the Bug Blaster for an elf called the Archer and adding DDT bombs that wipe out everything in their cloud.
Q 13Why do meerkats and coatis roll a captured millipede along the ground before eating it?
To rub off its toxins
Q 21Japan's train millipede swarms every eight years, a rhythm otherwise confirmed only in which insects?
Cicadas
Cicadas were the only confirmed periodical animals until a 2021 study tracked the millipede's broods; its swarms have obstructed mountain trains on Honshu since 1920.
Q 22A fossil-hunting bus driver found Pneumodesmus, among the oldest known land animals, in which country?
Scotland
Scotland is where the one-centimetre fossil of this millipede lookalike turned up, on the Aberdeenshire shore, and it was named newmani after its finder, Mike Newman.
Q 23The former record holder for most legs, the 750-legged Illacme plenipes, lives only in which US state?
California
To rub off its toxins: the rolling makes the millipede spend its defensive secretions and wipes them away, leaving a much safer meal.
Q 14Arthropleura, a millipede over two metres long, lived mainly in which geological period?
Carboniferous
Carboniferous rocks hold most of its remains: the largest land arthropod of all time left trackways up to 50 centimetres wide and died out early in the Permian.
Q 15The largest pill millipede, an emerald-green species, rolls into a ball the size of which object?
A baseball
A baseball is the size an adult female reaches when curled up, an example of island gigantism in a species found only in Madagascar.
Q 16Pill millipedes are a textbook case of convergent evolution with which unrelated crustaceans?
Woodlice
Woodlice, or pill bugs, evolved the same roll-up armour on their own, and the ball trick even arose twice among the millipedes themselves.
Q 17After moulting, what do most millipedes do with the old exoskeleton they have just shed?
Eat it
They eat it, recycling the hard armour, and many do their moulting hidden inside a specially prepared chamber in the soil.
Q 18Which colourful amphibians are thought to borrow toxic compounds from millipedes for their own defence?
Poison dart frogs
Poison dart frogs are believed to build millipede chemicals into their own defences, turning a dangerous meal into a borrowed weapon.
Q 19Which Greek goddess gave her name to the leggiest millipede ever found, living 60 metres underground?
Persephone
Persephone, queen of the underworld, suited a pale, thread-thin animal about a millimetre wide and nearly ten centimetres long.
Q 20What vivid colour is the spiny dragon millipede found in a Thai cavern, a warning that it is toxic?
Shocking pink
Shocking pink advertises its poison glands, and the three-centimetre animal was ranked third among the top ten new species of 2008.
California is its only home: first seen in San Benito County in 1926, the species was not found again until 2005, almost 80 years later.
Q 24Which fruit gives Virginia's Apheloria millipede its nickname, thanks to the scent of its defences?
Cherry
Cherry, or almond, is how its defensive cocktail smells, and science has known the species since 1770, when a British zoologist described specimens sent from Virginia.
Q 25In Brachycybe feather millipedes, which family member coils around the eggs until they hatch?
The father
The father stands guard in a rare case of paternal care among invertebrates, and eggs taken away from him all fail to survive.
Q 26What material do Chordeumatida millipedes produce at their tail ends to build moulting and egg chambers?
Silk
Silk comes from spinnerets on the last body segment, which is why the group and its close relatives are known as spinning millipedes.
Q 27Millipedes and centipedes together belong to which major group of arthropods?
Myriapods
Myriapods, from the Greek for countless feet, also include the little-known pauropods and symphylans; millipedes are the largest class in the group, with about 12,000 named species.
Q 28Which naturalist first classified millipedes scientifically, placing them among wingless insects?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus named seven species in his Systema Naturae of 1758, and millipedes had to wait until 1844 for a class of their own, Diplopoda.
Q 29In which country are millipedes commonly called shongololos?
South Africa
South Africa took the word from Xhosa and Zulu ishongololo, and it is also a name for the giant African millipede, the largest species alive today.
Q 30Which tiny creatures live on the giant African millipede, cleaning its armour in return for food?
Mites
Mites crawl among its legs in a partnership that suits both sides, and the docile millipede itself is popular as a pet.