Every eight years, trains in Japan’s mountain regions come to a halt. The cause is not a signal failure, snowfall, or a landslide. It is something else entirely: millipedes, in the millions.

Millions of Parafontaria laminata armigera crawl out to search for food and a place to breed. They often cross railway tracks along the way. Any driver unlucky enough to hit this stretch faces a wriggling carpet of millipedes. Each one is barely 3 cm long. Together they can carpet the tracks for up to 200 meters, and the crushed millipedes make the rails too slippery for trains to run safely, so the schedule is delayed by hours.

It took scientists fifty years to figure out this phenomenon. The millipedes’ life cycle explains it. They develop underground for seven years, growing from egg to adult. On the eighth year they surface, lay eggs and then die, restarting the cycle.

It’s nature’s own timetable. The trains just have to work around it.

P.S. Technology still bows to nature.

🚃🐛📆

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