Lots of Legs

A creature in the Asian jungle and its role in Jewish history

Many of you correctly guessed the identity of the two million creatures that I saw in Thailand on Monday. They were indeed bats. It was truly spectacular to watch them - and to hear the beating of millions of wings! My wife and I were particularly astounded at how they coordinated their departure from the cave - in a steady stream that was 10-20 bats wide. Try to imagine two million people doing this in an orderly fashion!

The following day, we entered the jungle of Khao Yai National Park. This is one of the few remaining monsoon forests in Southeast Asia, and the largest. We saw monkeys (macaques and gibbons), hornbills, water dragons, monitor lizards, a beautiful but deadly viper, elephant dung (but alas no elephants), white squirrels, and tried unsuccessfully to pull a huge Asian forest scorpion out of his cave.

But the creature that we saw most of was the millipede. Thailand is home to 228 species of millipedes, and I saw many of them. Tiny beautiful yellow ones with black spots called “candy ball pill millipedes,” small bright red millipedes, egg-shaped and egg-sized brown millipedes which looked like roly-polies, armored millipedes, and giant millipedes about eight inches long. Unlike the very nasty and dangerous centipedes which live in this part of the world, millipedes are harmless (though some species secrete sticky goo which is difficult to wash off). And there’s something very cute and earnest about how they diligently trundle along with a ripple of legs. I adore them!

Millipedes are actually mentioned in the Bible. At the end of parashat Shemini, when the Torah is speaking about invertebrates that are forbidden to eat due to being repulsive (Vayikra 11:42), it speaks about invertebrates that crawl on their belly, those that go on four legs (a difficult term that I may discuss in a future post), and those with lots of legs (marbeh raglayim). As Rashi notes, this last phrase refers to centipedes and millipedes.

But someone once wrote to me to ask me about another intriguing reference in rabbinic literature. Tosafot (Eruvin 8b), describing alleyways that stem asymetrically from a major alley, compares them to the legs of a centipede. My questioner asked that surely their body is based on bilateral symmetry - each leg has another leg directly opposite. So why did the Tosafist say that they are asymmetrical? In contrast to elephants, there are plenty of centipedes in Europe to observe. How did Tosafot get it wrong?

The answer is that centuries ago, people just didn't have a mindset of checking to see if their assumptions and common beliefs were actually correct. Even the great Aristotle said things that were not only incorrect, but easily observable to be incorrect, such as that men have more teeth than women - and nobody thought to check. Modern science, which is based on empirical observation and testing, is an innovation.

Meanwhile, we are creating a millipede exhibit at the Biblical Museum of Natural History. But the signage will not, of course, make any reference to this Tosafos. Just like dinosaurs and evolution, certain topics are banned at the museum!