Chinese red-headed centipedes creep unseen in the darkness despite not being able to tell light from the dark because they lack eyes entirely. Now, researchers have figured out how these centipedes avoid the sunlight they can’t see.
You wouldn’t want to step on a Chinese red-headed centipede. These venomous pencil-length arthropods scutter beneath the leaves of East Asian and Australian forests, their black, multisegmented bodies and bright red pincers hidden from view.
They creep unseen in the darkness despite not being able to tell light from dark because they lack eyes entirely.that alerts the leggy arthropods to seek shelter, researchers report today in theThe antennae are packed with muscles and covered in sensitive hairlike projections that help the bugs make sense of their surroundings, says Paul Marek, an entomologist at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who studies eyeless millipedes and was not involved in the new study. “They use them like a blind person's cane to essentially feel around in the dark.” Myriapods, a group that includes centipedes and millipedes, have gradually simplified their vision over evolutionary history. Several of these critters lack eyes entirely. In the perpetual darkness beneath the leaflitter, sight is less important than touch, which they use to pinpoint prey including worms, spiders, scorpions, and even small reptiles and mice. Their lack of vision doesn’t make the myriapods any less dangerous. The Chinese red-headed centipede delivers a powerful venom that wreaks havoc on its prey’s circulatory system. In the lab, researchers have observed themdoesn’t just lack eyes. It also has no known light-sensing proteins, says Shilong Yang, a molecular biologist at the Northeast Forestry University in Harbin, China. So how does it know if it accidentally scuttles into the sunlight, where predators such as snakes and birds could snap it up? To find out, Yang and his team placed the centipedes into two adjoining transparent containers, one of which was completely covered with black tape. They put a lamp above the setup to simulate sunlight and recorded the creatures’ movements between the bright and dark chambers. They also trained a thermal imaging camera on the centipedes to determine how their bodies responded to the light’s warmth. Whenever the centipedes scurried to the dark chamber, the infrared imagery revealed large amounts of heat were concentrating along the animals’ curled antennae. Within 10 seconds of being exposed to the light, the arthropods’ antennae heated up from about 28°C to more than 37°C. The researchers then dissolved several of the sensory nerves in the antennae to determine their chemical makeup. Doing so revealed a thermal receptor called BRTNaC1, an ion channel that pumps electrically charged atoms between cells throughout the centipede’s antennae. The BRTNaC1 receptor is triggered by temperatures between 33°C and 48° C. The researchers concluded that when light warms the centipedes’ antennae, it sparks the activation of BRTNaC1. This in turn sets off a physiological response that alerts the centipede it has ventured into the light. To confirm their light-sensing role, the researchers covered the centipedes’ antennae with tinfoil, blocking their exposure to the lamplight. These centipedes strayed from darkness far more often than those with uncovered antennae. Hoping to shed light on how BRTNaC1 works, the researchers also injected several chemical concoctions into the centipedes’ antennae to see what effects they would have. They found that raising testosterone levels effectively hampered the bugs’ ability to sense light. For reasons that are not yet clear, increased testosterone dampened the activity of the BRTNaC1 receptor and resulted in the centipedes spending more time in the light. Chinese red-headed centipedes are not the only sightless creatures that can perceive light. Scientists have discovered that
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