how do you go about breeding?

hi guys i'm tempted to try and breed some of my scorps, but whats the best way to go about it? cooling? conditions? time of year?

stick the male in a well fed females' enclosure. and hope for the best!

as easy as that?

yep.

you can experiment with it. Sometimes they breed more after cooling periods. Sometimes they breed more after warmer periods. You can put the male to live with the female and hope it happens or introduce them a few times and not let them stay together.

Which ever way you do it especially if they are non-communal species keep an eye on them.

Also put in a flat piece of slate for them to mate on.

Kuma wrote:

. . . a flat piece of slate . . .

Any solid surface will work. Some keepers have observed spermatophores anchored to particularly large pieces of substrate. I've also observed a male try climbing up the glass walls of the tank when he couldn't find the slate.

Mildly off topic but do any of the say, more closely related species ever interbreed? e.g. can you get crossbred Heterometrus?

Never confirmed. The main obstacle is the shape of the female's operculum being compatible with the shape of the spermatophore.

is there any time of year to attempt it or can you, say, stick a male in with the female like today, then back in again 2 days later?

That should work. As for time of year, I would think that's only an issue with temperate species that you expose to seasonal variations. Some mate in the spring, some in the fall.

Just experiment with timing and see when your females are receptive.

polis talked about crossbreeding in a the bio of scorps, and said that there was a hybridization between two Androctonus sp, with young successfully produced.

Well there ya go.

I need to sit down and read the damn thing one of these days, but the next 50 or so are pretty busy.

(Hopefully I'll be busy after that, too.)

I still aint got through the book yet. Need my reading head on to go through it.

i didn't relise that cross breeding is doable in scorps, i would of thought they stuck to the same species, but maybe not, do you think they can sense if 1 scorp is of a different species?

oh yes, I'm sure the stimulus for each species differs slightly. juddering paterns and the way they engage each other and all that stuff. but if two species are very, very simmilar I could see it happening.

it does make you think abit, i mean what is really happening out there when we're not looking!?

lots and lots and lots of scorpion sex.

scorpion111 wrote:

lots and lots and lots of scorpion sex.

I think we can be sure of that!
There are definitely natural hybrids that occur between different species of birds (crossbred ducks etc.) and mammals so I suppose it couldn't be too far fetched in scorps. Probably depends on the precise family relationship...

The reason I asked in the first place is that my scorpion does have a very small patch of granulation on the side of it's carapace (it's quite hard to see but still it's not as totally smooth as an H. laoticus is supposed to be) but it also has a very dark/black telson and is not that shiny. So although everyone has kinda agreed that it is a laoticus it doesn't fit the laoticus species description 100% and seems to have some spinifer type granulation... so could it be a hybrid itself? I'm waiting for the shop to get in touch with me to see if they know what species of 'Giant Forest Scorpion' they think they are actually selling.
I still want to try breeding scorps, for interest, so I want to get a laoticus and spinifer females and keep a small communal setup. In principle, it would be an interesting experiment to see if my male mates with just one or both the females, and which one.
3 large black scorps,.. I'll have to start tagging them for ID purposes, (you can just tell that I do science can't you )

PS - My scorp seems completely uninterested in making a burrow and just hides under a large piece of bark. It also eats like a horse (i.e it's prepared to eat something at least every other day- 3 med crickets last time), is that normal? should I let it eat as much as it likes as long as it doesn't get too fat?

Let it eat as much as it will accept. If it gets to be too much, it will just quit eating and make you panic.