Scorpion Venom
-Scorpions give birth to live young
Scorpion Venom:Unlike insects, which generally deposit eggs outside their bodies, scorpions produce live babies, a practice known as viviparity. Some scorpions develop within a membrane, where they receive nourishment both from a yolk and from their mothers. Others develop without a membrane and receive nourishment directly from their mothers. The gestational stage can be as short as two months, or as long as 18 months, depending on the species. After birth, the newborn scorpions ride on their mother’s back, where they remain protected until they molt for the first time. After this, they disperse
-Scorpions are ancient organisms
Were you able to travel back in time 300 million years, you would encounter scorpions that look remarkably similar to their descendants living today. Fossil evidence shows that scorpions have remained largely unchanged since the Carboniferous period. The first scorpion ancestors likely lived in the seas, and may even have had gills. By the Silurian period, 420 million years ago, some of these creatures had made their way onto land. Early scorpions may have had compound eyes
-Scorpions can survive just about anything
Arthropods have lived on land for over 400 million years. Modern scorpions can live as long as 25 years. That’s no accident. Scorpions are champions of survival. A scorpion can live for a full year without food. Because they have book lungs (like horseshoe crabs), they can stay submerged underwater for up to 48 hours and survive. Scorpions live in harsh, dry environments, but they can live on only the moisture they obtain from their food. They have extremely low metabolic rates and require only a tenth of the oxygen of most insects.
Scorpions engage in an elaborate courtship ritual, known as the promenade à deux (literally, a walk for two). The dance begins when the male and female make contact. The male takes his partner by her pedipalps and gracefully walks her back and forth until he finds a proper location for his spermatophore. Once he deposits his package of sperm, he leads the female over it and positions her genital opening so she can take up the sperm. In the wild, the male usually makes a quick departure once mating is completed. In captivity, the female often devours her mate, having worked up an appetite from all the dancing.
scorpion venom
The incidence of autotomy, i.e., the percentage of scorpions with part of the metasoma (including telson) missing and a scar present at the severed stump, in a single population was calculated for those species with more than ten specimens from a single collection locality. The results for different populations of the same species were not combined because it was assumed that the incidence of autotomy could vary among localities due to ecological factors (e.g., presence and abundance of predators). Differences among sexes and stages (adult males vs adult females vs immatures) were analyzed as 2×3 contingency tables with Fisher’s exact test in R v. 3.1.1 statistical package .
Scorpion Venom
