Heterometrus madraspatensis

Hopefully this thread will end in there being babies but it's nice to start a breeding report from the conception

MATING

My first and second attempts at breeding these consisted of putting the male into the females enclosure. Which subsequently ended up in (1st attempt) the female trying the snip off the males pedipalps and (2nd attempt) the female putting up a fight and the male 'sex stinging' her, but she still remained uninterested and territorial.

So after a little advice from Alex (major thanks and big hug ) I created a simple honeymoon suite consisting of a foot long tank with half inch of forest bed substrate and some slate in the middle as the 'platform'

The female was put in first, and for the first time since I have had her became dissorientated and settled down straight away. The male went in a minute of so later and after 3-4 mins he spotted the female and started a slight wagging of the metasoma, although he made no advance.
A short time later the female walked over to him and allowed herself to be gripped by the male. He didn't have to 'sex sting' her, just flicked her legs with his telson a few times.

They turned around and the male, slowly brought the female over to the slate. Not much of a waltz although there was a little backwards and forwards movement. The male was more raising his metasoma up, occasionally over the females head and wagging it from side to side.

then for a short time the wagging got more frequent and there was a juddering of the back legs (I'm gunna see a few quotes in the UC and OOCQ threads here!) I am presuming this was when the male was setting down his spermetaphore.

The male brought the female forward a short distance, stayed there for a short time then all of a sudden, the female sprang back to life and the male legged it!

Leaving behind the spermetaphore.

I'm hoping that this was successful and will update this thread once things (hopefully) progress

Bravo, Lisa... You done it... It's a confirm hit. Insemination is indeed very brief. The footage looks promising. That was just like me spinnys. The T.V. dialog in the background was randomly in context at times lol.

Brilliant. Conduct the same with your other Het pairs... I leave pairs in overnight sometimes just to be sure. I'd wake up in the morning and see them curled up in the opposite corners. You may repeat this exercise again with the same pairs. When the female eventually becomes blatantly unreceptive even in this situation, then you know you've got a good thing going and you can expect babies within a year...

Provide warmth for the development of the embryos. Now I'm gonna do this with me spinny pairs.

All the best

thanks alex.

So I should try them again together soon then? how long between 'attempts'?

You can do it nightly, alternate nights... I just did it whenever I was free to barely supervise them so they don't get too rough. I know they're gonna have a field day in OCQ with this.

Its the rainy season in South East Asia this time of the year but, I'm not certain how that affects scorpion mating frequency. It would seem they mate all year but June to July really seems to be the best time of the year for everything; Mating, birthing, and males making the endless treks for mates....

right ok then, once again thanks for the information. I may try them again over the weekend

UPDATE:

During routine maintenance I decided to re-drench the moss in the enclosures. I took off the moss 'lid' inside the female madras' tank (it kinda sits on top of the rounded bog wood) I nearly jumped for joy...

obviously not babies on the back yet... too soon! However, there before me was one incredibly fat female. I couldn't get too close and certainly not enough time to get the camera before she slowly walked down the burrow, but i can report a definite white blotching to the side membrane and a spinal cord squished to the tergites.

since the mating, she ate crickets up until about the end of january, then she went underground. I obviously had to dig her out to put her into her new home in the big tank. but shortly after moving in, she dug her burrow and i have seen a pedipalp approx 2 times since then. This sighting was the first full body sighting since january.. i think it was!

anyway i was like a kid in a sweet shop last night when i saw her... major ***SQUEEEE***

So I will keep you updated as and when I have more info or can get a picture of her in gravid state.

I sooo cannot believe my luck, it was awesome to see her under the moss two nights ago... tonight she came all the way out in hunting mode... guess she is hungry after 2 months of not eating
And as much as I know this species is pretty aggressive, nothing prepared me for how aggressive she would be in gravid state. ever seen a 5" scorpion jump about 3" into the air? I just did! even the slightest movement triggered her into hissing and jumping. for the first two minutes anyway, she went camera shy after that and wouldn't jump for the camera... typical

And for the first time in all my scorpion keeping... I saw venom from a scorpion.

I took the opportunity to get some pictures, because I have yet to see pictures on this species gravid on the net.
I know she was pretty peeved with me but I thought it would be of use to other people wanting to breed this species in the future. She has another 4-6months to go so plenty of time for her to settle down and relax. And I slung in about 3 crickets to keep her going, obviously take out the uneaten in morning
I apologise for the poor quality of the pictures... my camera sensor really doesn't like artificial light and taking pictures through plastic tubs lol. only thing that lets this camera down!

I'd like to interject before the flood of "OMG that's awesome!" replies, that this is a breeding report, and thus not a place for commentary or discussion -- so if anyone would like to comment, feel free to start a thread in the general section.

-- Mike

Update (13/04/09)

over the last week she has increased the size of her burrow, shifting a good litre of substrate. She is now bang on 4mth into her gestation, and has now disappeared off the face of the earth again lol.

I am not sure whether this is to regulate her temp/humidity throughout the burrow or whether this might be some sort of 'birthing' chamber - might be a bit of both.

I am going to get one of those chef's thermometers soon (ya know the ones with a long probe to check the inner temperature of food) So I can get more accurate reading below the surface.

Anyway glad to see the positive behaviour of this mum to be and will update again soon

update (05.05.09) WE DID IT!

three nights ago I saw the female out again. sat on the bogwood which is the entrance to her burrow. she still looked plump so I never thought any more about it.

Tonight when i saw her out, she was accompanied by 3 2i babies. Which was quite a surprise because I wasn't expecting anything until around august. my plans were to re house her into shallow tank to make it easier to extract the babies. sods law!

anyway we removed the female (who wasn't impressed) and went through the substrate with a fine tooth comb. where we found 12 healthy 2i babies. all were brown apart from two that were paler. I presume the moulted to 2i fairly recently.

the babies were transferred into separate tubs (cricket tubs) with 1cm coir substrate and a milk bottle lid with a hole cut out for shelter. I put some crickets in and 1 was eating within minutes... good stuff.

As mentioned above the female was still looking like she was well fed so the huge amount of crickets she ate within 4-6 weeks of mating saw her through to raising her young without the need for further food. last week was the first time I had noticed the crickets look like they had been eaten.

so at a surface temperature of 28oC the gestation was just under 5 months. Sorry I cant be more specific. Now I know I will try and get a better gestation duration next time.

The heat mat goes all the way to the bottom of the tank at the back so some area's under the substrate would have been higher than the surface area.
The actual birthing chamber (see previous post) was made half way along the bottom right hand side, approx 5" away from the heat mat. humidity would have been very high at this point.

Anyway I hope this helps anyone who may breed this species in the future. pics to follow tomorrow