Scorpion with a head in its belly

So we were in our local exotic pet shop and we saw 3 Caraboctonus Keyserlingi in a communal enclosure, 3 of them.

We go home, set up the same size box (exactly the same box) and return to buy one, as we already have one.

We introduced them to the new box at the same time, complete with 3 hides, and they got along fine the first few days. The bumped into eachother and didn't pay much attention, just kept on exploring. The night we got them I put 3 decent sized crickets in the box so theres no fighting over food.

Today I look in there, all 3 crickets still alive, and I lift one hide to find the new one has been eating my original!

It was a sad moment.

Then to really take the biscuit, I find him a few hours later snacking out on a cricket!

So here is the scorpion with a head in its belly, the head of my other scorp. He was called Zeus but turned out to be not quite as mighty.

This new one cannot be named..

The closet thing i will have to get a scorp named after me.. Well Emperor Scorps translate into Kejser Scorpion, and since my last name is Kejser wich is Danish for Emperor

Thats cool

man thats crapy. im having the same sorta problem with my 3i's and 2i's. there is a big 3i who is one hell of a bully. he has mistoke two of his siblings for food........ the thing is, he gets 3 crix a week. (he steals food too)

Thing is other nights when ive checked on them they've been under the same piece of wood. I have 2 bits of wood, one big bit, a smaller bit, and a bit of brick that chipped off a bigger piece, and they always used to be underneath the large bit together, so i'm not entirely sure why it happened. I was hoping to breed them...

Are you certain the one in the picture is NOT a Bothriurus sp and the new one was a Caroboctonus keyserlingi or vice versa?You should always leave these oddball Chilean scorps alone because several species all look alike except for minor characters .

Could it be a gravid female? I tried keeping V. spinigerus communally except for one that kept eating tankmates, and she turned out to be gravid.

IHeartMantids wrote:

Could it be a gravid female? I tried keeping V. spinigerus communally except for one that kept eating tankmates, and she turned out to be gravid.

Mike,
The one in the pic above is male(Fat chelae) and my guess is it is Bothriurus sp. because the last tergite in C.keyserlingi is very long and they are longer than the Bothriurus sp. look alikes. To confirm you must look at the sternum(Bothriurus is elongated and Caraboctonus is not.

I purchased our first C. keyserlingi from The Spider Shop, and the assistant in the shop said theirs was also bought from The Spider Shop, labelled as C. keyserlingi...

MooSmoo wrote:

I purchased our first C. keyserlingi from The Spider Shop, and the assistant in the shop said theirs was also bought from The Spider Shop, labelled as C. keyserlingi...

They(both species) are easily confused so I would not go by what a person in a pet store says.The only sure way to know is to compare the shape of the sternum. Bothriurus sp. have an elongated sternum like this "<>" and Caraboctonus is like this" [ ] with a small triangle on top(Pentagonal shape)

if the pet shop did get it from the spider shop it would probably be right, but i wouldnt trust a pet shop to tell the truth