Kouhun / Legends Kouhuns were vermiform arthropods with segmented bodies , roughly thirty centimeters long , from the jungle world of Indoumodo . Small , silent , and fast , kouhuns were capable of delivering a fatal and quick - acting neurotoxin through their bite , as well as a nonfatal but nonetheless painful sting from their tails . Kouhuns were white in color , though they also existed in reddish - brown and black varieties . Kouhuns could survive in almost any environment except extreme cold . On their homeworld , they nested in hollow trees and hunted creatures the size of dogs . Though omnivorous , kouhuns were predatory , detecting their prey by its body heat and then attacking it , often choosing between prey simply on the basis of which victim was closest . They were aggressive creatures , but could be scared away by attackers , though they turned to fight when cornered . Because of their many advantages for covert killings , kouhuns were a favored weapon of assassins . They would be starved so that they would attack immediately upon being released , then infiltrated into a victim ' s home via a droid , package , or even by slipping through tight spaces such as open windows or ducts . Kouhun nests , spawned by kouhuns who had escaped from assassins , could be found on a number of worlds from the Outer Rim Territories to the Core , including Coruscant . Biology and appearance . Kouhuns were pale , centipedelike arthropods approximately thirty centimeters in length . Silent and fast , kouhuns could administer via a bite from their mouth pincers a nerve toxin both fast - acting and fatal to almost all mammalian species , and which in most intelligent species created symptoms resembling a heart attack or another natural manner of death . Their second means of administering poison was a tail stinger , which injected a painful but nonlethal dose ; once this was administered , incapacitating the prey , the kouhun could go to work on its victim with its mandibles . To consume their prey , kouhuns released their saliva , which contained a chemical that broke down the prey ' s flesh into a digestible liquid . If multiple kouhuns set upon a victim , they would leave nothing behind but bones and a stain . Kouhuns would even attack prey if they were not hungry , acting on their killing instincts . The body of the kouhun was segmented , each segment containing a pair of legs , with which they were capable of scaling sheer surfaces . The carapace of the kouhun was often naturally white , though they could be fed dyes to change their color ; some kouhuns , however , were naturally reddish brown or glossy black . The head of the kouhun had a stinging tongue , measuring from four to ten centimeters in length , as well as the creature ' s mandibles and its black eyes . Kouhuns came in two varieties , one with a larger segmented body and more pronounced tail stinger than the other . While they originated on a jungle world , kouhuns could survive in almost any climate except extreme cold . They could even be found deep underground in damp subterranean caverns . Sand worked as an artificial habitat for the creatures ; they would remain burrowed and hidden under it until they detected prey . Behavior and intelligence . Living in the wild in the jungles of Indoumodo , kouhuns lived in large hollow trees , hunting creatures the size of dogs that nested in crevices within the trees . Kouhuns were attracted to warmth , and they used this sense to locate their victims , often targeting simply the nearest warm - blooded creature . Though possessed of a predatory nature , kouhuns were , in fact , omnivorous . While aggressive , they could also be timid on occasion ; light made them freeze or attempt to hide , and when attacked they fled or hid . When cornered , however , kouhuns would fight back . Before they attacked , kouhuns were known to rear up and hiss . They had a level of awareness almost akin to Force - sensitivity , with which they could avoid security systems . Kouhuns could also use cover to their advantage to sneak up on their prey . Handling them was dangerous , requiring a container to hold them ; if they escaped , they would regard their handler as a threat and attack it . Barely intelligent , kouhuns were classified as vermin . History . In the time of the Great Galactic War , the adoptive father of Darth Malgus kept kouhuns as part of his menagerie . He used them as an illustrative lesson for his son , comparing the controlled nature of man with the mindless killing of the kouhun . In 22 BBY , the bounty hunter Zam Wesell was given two kouhuns by her colleague Jango Fett to assassinate Senator Padmé Amidala , on Coruscant . Wesell sent them to Amidala ' s apartment in an ASN courier droid , which bypassed Amidala ' s window security , cut a hole into the window , and released the creatures inside . Dropping below the security scanners covering the floor , the kouhuns made their way up Amidala ' s bed . When the senator ' s droid security , R2 - D2 , detected something and turned on its lights , scanning the room , the kouhuns froze . Once the droid went dark , they crawled up to where the senator slept . Before they could kill her , however , Amidala ' s Jedi guard Anakin Skywalker sensed the danger , ran into the room , and sliced them apart with his lightsaber . Thook Lafrell , lieutenant to the slaver Gomalo , used kouhuns in the city of Tolea Biqua on Genarius in around 20 BBY . After abducting Ezra Du ' Re , an agent of the Cularin Office of Public Safety , from a warehouse in the city , Lafrell left behind a number of kouhuns to attack anyone who investigated the scene of the crime . To provide the creatures cover from which to attack , Lafrell left assorted debris scattered across the floor . Kouhuns in the galaxy . Kouhuns were native to the jungle planet Indoumodo , in Wild Space . Some offworld specimens were found in zoos or poison research facilities , but the vast majority of kouhuns off Indoumodo were in the possession of assassins . Poor and run - down districts of urban worlds , including Coruscant , were sometimes home to breeding colonies of kouhuns , which traced their origins back to escapees from assassins ' cages . They were found in large numbers on the Outer Rim worlds of Geonosis , Tatooine , and Gamorr , as well as Core Worlds such as Corellia . Assassins found kouhuns useful for their small size , swift motion , and deadly poison . A kouhun could be easily passed through security — carried on one ' s person , transported by droid , mailed in a package to the target — and was nearly untraceable back to the assassin . They could enter a dwelling through small apertures , such as ducts or windows , whereupon they would home in on a victim ' s body heat and kill it with their poison . Assassins often starved their kouhuns beforehand to spur them to attack the victims . They sometimes dyed a kouhun the dominant color of the environment that it was intended to infiltrate . Criminals also sometimes used kouhuns as traps , leaving them where their enemies would be expected to tread and scattering debris across the floor to give the creatures cover to strike from . A synthetic neurotoxin known as kouhunin was developed based on the venom of the kouhun . Behind the scenes . Kouhuns , known during production as " assassin bugs , " were created by George Lucas for . His instructions to the design team were to create a that could inject poison into its victims . However , the designs underwent a number of variants , some more spider - like , a number exploring the idea of transparent skin that could show poison coursing underneath . One , with a larger tail stinger , was almost used as a final design and was used in Hasbro ' s action figure scale rendition of the kouhuns . This was later canon ized as a separate variation of kouhun in " The New Essential Guide to Alien Species " . For their realization in " Attack of the Clones " , the kouhuns were computer - generated . To animate them , a technique called " procedural animation " was used , in which the creature ' s body was first animated to move down a path , then all the legs were animated separately so they would make contact with the ground in a realistic fashion . The sounds of the kouhuns were created by artists Dennie Thorpe and Jana Vance by squishing the inside of a grapefruit , while the leg sounds were created by running a stick up and down a ridged metal surface .