Did Millipedes Cause An Australian Train Crash?

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Australia is known to many of us outside it as a nation of treacherous creatures. Redback spiders, saltwater crocodiles, and the Death Adder snake are just a few of the many local fauna that are absolutely as scary as they sound.

I spent 2011 Down Under and managed to avoid all of the above, only to break my collarbone in a motorcycle collision with a kangaroo.

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Now, some are speculating that millipedes may have proverbially made an attempt at increasing their street cred by causing a train crash, according to this report from Reuters.

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The claim being made is that the invertebrates coated the tracks with slime as they crawled over it, which aversely affected a train's ability to brake, causing it to crash into a stopped train.

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The crash took place at low speed, but several people were sent to the hospital, according to Reuters.

Then again, railway officials are calling millipedes unlikely crash culprits... but maybe that's just what those little crawlers want us to think.