The English word "centipede" refers to basically the same type of disgusting creepy-crawly arthropod as the Japanese ムカデ. Sometimes, ムカデ is written in kanji as 百足. This is an obvious case of ateji (you would never read 百 in isolation as ム or ムカ, nor 足 as カデ or デ).
It so happens that "centipede" comes from the Latin centi- "hundred" + pedis "foot". This suggests that it is certainly possible that the use of 百足 ("hundred" + "foot") stems from a direct calque of "centipede", or a cognate of "centipede" in some other language like Dutch or Portuguese. Is this in fact the case?
Note: it is entirely possible that the answer to this question is well-known and readily available in standard online sources. I wouldn't know, since I have not actually done any research on this topic, because that entails a risk of coming across pictures of centipedes. I do hope you will forgive me this.