A centipede is a long, thin creature with a jointed body and a great many little legs, two on each body-part. It looks a bit like a worm if you only glance, but it is not a worm: it has a hard outside and it runs. You find it under stones, in damp soil, in wood piles, and sometimes in a bathroom or under a flowerpot. The name says “hundred feet,” though actually almost no centipede has exactly a hundred legs — some have far fewer, some have more. Many can bite; the bite stings, but the ones people meet in a Taiwan house are usually more frightening than dangerous. Centipedes hunt small insects. People often mix them up with millipedes, which are slower, more rounded, and eat plants. It is an ordinary nature word: children know it, and science class uses it too.