Just when you thought the world was scary enough, think again. 
 
 Scientists recently discovered the very first amphibious centipede in the world. And the size is not that of the usual centipedes you would chance upon in the garden or in the shower drain. This monster can grow up to 7.9 inches or 20 centimeters long and belongs to the giant centipede family Scolopendra. 
 
 Like all other centipedes and monsters in your childhood, this creature is carnivorous and venomous. Featured last month in a ZooKeys publication, this amphibious centipede apparently only lives in Southeast Asia, so the rest of you folks could breathe again and calm your racing hearts. 
 
 This centipede had actually already been discovered in 2001 by London National History Museum entomologist George Beccaloni during his honeymoon in Thailand. What was supposed to be an nice afternoon of looking for bugs turned horrifically when he chanced upon a giant centipede with long legs and a horrifying dark-green color. When he lifted the rock that the centipede was hiding under, it quickly escaped into the stream and plunged underwater into a rock, instead of the forest. 
 
 This fueled Beccaloni's curiosity, who after quite difficulty, was able to capture the centipede in a large water container. As soon as the centipede was in the jar, apparently, it immediately swam powerfully "like an eel" and dove to the bottom, with horizontal undulations of the body. When it was out of the jar, however, water almost immediately rolled off of its body, leaving it completely dry. Beccaloni brought the specimen back to the museum, where after consultations and skeptical observations showed that it might not be amphibious, where it would sit in the collection for many years. 
 
 It wasn't until years later that Beccaloni's colleague Gregory Edgecombe and his Thai student Warut Siriwut described a new species of centipede. So far there had only been four specimens of the species found and studied, but from that the scientists were able to identify main characteristics of the creature. 
 
 Like all other kinds of centipedes, this new species is venomous. Although may not be fatal, bites from these big centipedes cause a seething, burning pain that can spread out your whole limb even from just a finger or toe bite. 
 
 To the scientists who made this horrific discovery, this news shouldn't scare the masses but make us revel in wonders of nature and what lies still unknown to us. ||||| Deep beneath the surface of the Earth, in a dank and dismal cave, lives Hades, the invertebrate king of hell. 
 
 Named for the mythological god of the underworld, Geophilus hadesi is a newly discovered species of centipede that inhabits the deep caves of the Velebit Mountains in Croatia. Unlike most centipedes of the order Geophilomorpha, which only occasionally seek shelter in caves, G. hadesi spends all its life in this dark, underground environment. Today (June 30), the team of scientists who discovered the remarkable critter published the first-ever description of the animal in the journal ZooKeys. 
 
 G. hadesi is one of only two known species of centipedes that never leave their cavernous homes. The other underground dweller, Geophilus persephones (named for the queen of the underworld, Persephone), was first discovered in a cave in France in the 1990s. G. hadesi was named with this mythical queen in mind, according to Pavel Stoev, an associate professor of zoology at the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria, and lead author of the paper detailing the new centipede species. [Creepy Crawlies & Flying Wonders: Incredible Cave Creatures] 
 
 Though its home, located nearly two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) below the Earth's surface, is a bit dark and gloomy, G. hadesi survives just fine, Stoev told Live Science. It has "exceptionally elongated" antennae and furlike body hair, or setae, covering its appendages, and these two features let the animal detect prey in total darkness, Stoev told Live Science. 
 
 Like most centipedes, G. hadesi feeds on living animals — most likely larvae, springtails (tiny, insectlike hexapods), worms, woodlice, spiders and other small prey. Though the centipede's bite is venomous, this "hellish" creature is likely completely harmless to humans, Stoev said. Not that G. hadesi spends much time with people. While scientists from the Croatian Biospeleogical Society have explored the Velebit Mountains where the Hades centipede lives, some of the crevices it inhabits are unreachable. One specimen was collected from a depth of 3,609 feet (1,100 meters), the deepest known habitat for any centipede. 
 
 G. hadesi has a long, flattened body that makes crawling around such rocky crevices easy. And its 33 pairs of legs end in thin claws that are "unusually long," according to the researchers. Like other creatures with pointy claws, such as the yeti crabs that inhabit the waters off Antarctica, the Hades centipede may have developed this feature in order to cling more securely to rocks. 
 
 "The change of a species' appearance is usually a result of a long evolution that is likely to have happened [over] the course of millions of years," said Stoev, who noted that the Hades centipede has also adapted to the deep caves' cold temperatures, which can drop as low as 37 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). 
 
 Scientists aren't exactly sure why the Hades centipede started living underground in the first place (though it likely had nothing to do with losing a bet to Zeus and Poseidon). 
 
 "It could be a dramatic change in the outside temperatures and overall conditions that forced less-adaptive organisms to seek shelter underground where the conditions are more stable and less dependent on the outside fluctuations," Stoev said. 
 
 The Hades centipede isn't the only critter that inhabits the caves of Velebit mountain range, which spans 90 miles (145 km) of northwest Croatia. Scientists have already discovered a whole host of pale, cave-dwelling creatures there. And many more creatures likely remain to be discovered, Poev said. 
 
 Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
– It's eight inches long with a painful bite, long legs, and "a horrible dark, greenish-black color." It's also bound to make you avoid all lakes and streams for the near future. Gregory Edgecombe of London's Natural History Museum says he's discovered a new species of centipede belonging to the giant centipede family Scolopendra that's not only horrible, but the first amphibious centipede species ever found. Edgecombe found two specimens of Scolopendra cataracta—named after the Latin word for "waterfall"—in Laos and a DNA test proved they were unique. However, the "horrific-looking" species, described in journal ZooKeys, had also been found by Edgecombe's colleague while on his honeymoon in Thailand back in 2001, reports National Geographic. George Beccaloni explains he was searching for bugs when he found a centipede hiding under a rock. Upon discovery, it escaped into a stream instead of onto land, as a normal centipede would. When Beccaloni finally captured the centipede, he noted it was a powerful swimmer with a body impervious to water, per Nature World News. But as no centipedes were known to be amphibious, he simply left the centipede in the Natural History Museum's collection. Unbeknownst to scientists, another S. cataracta was there—collected from Vietnam in 1928—but wrongly classified. Edgecombe notes S. cataracta is only found in Southeast Asia, is carnivorous, and "can deliver a painful bite," but it wouldn't kill a human. It's more likely to come in handy if the species "goes into the water at night to hunt aquatic or amphibious invertebrates," Beccaloni says. "People tend to study streams in the tropics during the day, but there is probably a whole other range of interesting amphibious things that come out at night," he adds ominously. (Meet this "centipede from hell.")