![]() ![]() ![]() During the day it may be found in woodpiles, palm trees, and decorative bark or under loose boards, woodpiles, rocks, or the bark of trees. It is a night feeder attracted to water, swimming pools, irrigated areas, or outside lights where food prey such as beetles, cockroaches, crickets, moths, and other insects are attracted as well. This scorpion can often be found around homes and in garages. Like many other desert scorpions, the Arizona hairy scorpion is a burrower but may also be found under rocks, logs, sleeping bags, and other surface objects. At maturity it can be 5 to 7 inches long. In Southern California it has been reported in Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties. This common desert species is found in Southern California and throughout Arizona. Larger scorpions can feed on small lizards, snakes and mice. They are nocturnal predators, feeding at night, on a wide range of insects, spiders, centipedes and even other scorpions. Scorpions that hide under stones and other objects during the day tend to carry their stinger to one side, whereas burrowing scorpions hold their stinger up over their backs. When running, they hold their pincers outstretched, and the posterior end of the abdomen is usually curved upward. Although they have two eyes in the center of the head and usually two to five more along the margin on each side, they don’t see well and depend on touch. Scorpions are easily distinguished by their crablike appearance, pair of pincers, four pairs of legs, and long, segmented tail ending with an enlarged segment bearing a stinger. Of the 70 or so species found in North America, only one, the Bark Scorpion, Centruroides exilicauda is considered dangerous because of its’ extremely potent venom. Most scorpions live in warm, dry climates, and many of the species found in North America occur in Arizona, adjacent areas of California, and parts of New Mexico. ![]() Here are the most prevalent scorpions found in Southern California. When other far larger predators are out looking for meals.SCORPION IDENTIFICATION What’s a scorpion? Which means this ability could be especially useful at night. While scorpions do have eight eyes, the predatory arachnids can still detect UV light when they’re covered. (Hence the reason we can see them glowing.) Kloock, along with other biologists, think the scorpions can detect this visual-light emission with “photon collectors” in their tails.Īs for what evolutionary purpose that ability could serve, there’s evidence it may help scorpions avoid exposing themselves if it’s too bright out. As Muller shows, when the scorpions absorb light in the ultraviolet wavelength they emit it in the visual band of the electromagnetic spectrum. It seems Kloock believes the most likely explanation is that the glow helps the scorpions to detect UV light. Although we imagine they’d just say GET OVER HERE! to each other over and over. Kloock even thinks the glow could be a way for scorpions to talk to each other. The speculative guesses range from the glow being a “relic trait” that’s no longer useful to it being a sort of sunscreen. In this video, Muller aims to answer the question: Why do almost all species of scorpion glow a bright green color under UV light? To figure out the answer Muller teams up with Professor of Biology Carl Kloock at California State University Bakersfield heading into the field (literally) to see how scorpions’ ability to fluoresce could benefit them evolutionarily.Īs Kloock himself notes he has six hypotheses that could explain the glowing scorpions. ![]()
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