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Invertebrates
Rain Forest
 Centipedes & Millipedes

Centipedes & Millipedes
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 10
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   11.02

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    venomous, generally, despite, segment, meat-eaters, species, poisonous, unique, arthropod, beetles, defense, subtle, furthermore, certain, prepare, such

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Other Languages
     Spanish: Los ciempiés y los milpiés

Centipedes & Millipedes   
1     Centipedes and millipedes give us goose bumps when they creep out from dark, damp places at night. Although the word "centipede" literally means "one hundred legs" and the word "millipede" "one thousand legs", these terms are really just exaggerations. While all centipedes have at least 30 legs, only a handful of them have more than one hundred legs. Furthermore, we are certain that no millipede species owns more than 400 legs.
 
2     Centipedes and millipedes are members of a big animal family - the arthropod. There are over 3,000 species of centipedes and more than 10,000 species of millipedes in the world. Because centipedes and millipedes have so many legs, scientists set up a unique class (the myriapod) for them in the arthropod family. Other arthropod classes include insects (butterflies and beetles), crustaceans (lobsters and crabs), and arachnids (scorpions and spiders). All arthropods have jointed legs and exoskeletons covering their segmented bodies.
 
3     Despite the fact that both centipedes and millipedes have no short supply of legs, there are several subtle differences between these two animals.

Paragraphs 4 to 5:
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