Click on the pics to load them in high resolution
I’ve always had a thing for handling dangerous animals. When I was at the Croc Bank in Mamallapuram Gerry Martin one day casually mentioned to me that he could teach me how to handle scorpions. It was a big mistake because from that day on I tailed him wherever he went hoping he would find the time to give me a few tips on handling them. In the end he got so exasperated with me following him like a shadow that one morning he showed me a few things.
Scorpions sting when people accidently step on them. As long as you don’t touch one on its back or face you’re usually ok. Interestingly if you pick up one by its sting (with a forceps) and place it on your palm it does not bother at all! That is because the scorpion views your palms as any other surface and just crawls all over it. Having a scorpion crawl on your arm can be a little scary though considering its four pairs of legs are quite prickly. And there’s always the fear that you might just frighten the creature and end up getting stung by it.
Though I’ve never been stung by a scorpion, I’ve heard that the sting of the scorpion in the photograph isn’t lethal. Though like all scorpion stings it is still very painful.
Scorpions are usually easily fed with a cockroach every couple of weeks. The prey is caught with the pincers, stung a couple of times and then consumed. Almost the entire body of its victim is eaten. With a cockroach you’ll be lucky if you see half a leg once the scorpion has finished with it!
Every once in a while they shed their exoskeleton which they do with such mind boggling dexterity. The entire scorpion will crawl out through only a small slit made on the underbelly leaving a perfect replica of the scorpion in the form of a complete unbroken exoskeleton!
The species I kept also seemed to be quite territorial. I once found two adults locked pincer to pincer and came back the next day to find one of them killed and eaten by the other. I’ve never kept two in the same enclosure since then!
One of the scorpions I kept also gave birth to a whole bunch of babies (scorpions give birth to live young). She carried the entire litter on her back for a whole two weeks. When they were first born they were pearly white. Eventually they started to turn yellowish. I presume they did not eat the entire time their mother carried them around. After two weeks when they began climbing off their mothers back I released them. Most of them were put in my own garden!
