Scorp closeup photoshoot!

Tryin to get good closeups of my Heterometrus's carapace to try n get a good ID of it, unfortunately she wasnt cooperating, and instead i just ended up gettin pinched tryin to take good pics (bloodys well hurt, broke the skin too) but thought ide share some of the pics i like the most:









And while i was at it I decided to take some pics of my male P. Imperator "Hooch" but he wasnt cooperating so I only got 2:





What do you guys think?

Whish i had a better camera likes, but big Canon cams with macro lenses are big cash money which is in serious short supply these days



EDIT!: Just been lookin at the Euscorpius article on the Heterometrus review and was lookin at the pics to try and identify my Het. and I'm guessing shes a Heterometrus Petersii based on the granulation of the chela and the colour of her telson and intersegmental membranes, can anyone confirm?

Cheers.

If you got pinched, "ur doin it wrong." Try using a paintbrush or a chopstick next time instead of your finger. Most scorps don't cooperate much when they're on an open, exposed piece of paper in bright light.

Can't help you much on the ID -- all I can tell you is it's not H. longimanus or H. laoticus. The other most commonly available one is H. spinifer, but you can't really rule out other species unless you know where exactly it was collected from.

Im pretty sure its not H. Spinifer cause they have lots of granules on their chela right? whereas my one has pretty smooth chela, also shes got a black telson n brown membranes which from what I've seen H. Spinifer doesnt have.

I actually got pinched when i put her on my hand just to try and handle her but she started feeling around with her chela and found my thumb and clamped down lol

HEY! you never told me what you think of the pics!

Sorry, the pics are pretty cool.

That's weird that she'd just feel around and clamp down on your thumb like that. Sounds like she's got an attitude problem.

I was under the impression that most Heterometrus have smooth chela. The only ones I know of off the top of my head that have heavy granulation like emps are H. swammerdami and the one that starts with an M and whose name I can't pronounce -- and those two aren't very common in trade that I'm aware of.

Well, whatever species it is, it's a cool-lookin' specimen. But I know how frustrating it can be not to know; I'm trying to ID a Vaejovid that's arriving tomorrow.

Mr. Mordax wrote:

Sorry, the pics are pretty cool.

That's weird that she'd just feel around and clamp down on your thumb like that. Sounds like she's got an attitude problem.

I was under the impression that most Heterometrus have smooth chela. The only ones I know of off the top of my head that have heavy granulation like emps are H. swammerdami and the one that starts with an M and whose name I can't pronounce -- and those two aren't very common in trade that I'm aware of.

Well, whatever species it is, it's a cool-lookin' specimen. But I know how frustrating it can be not to know; I'm trying to ID a Vaejovid that's arriving tomorrow.

Yeah its exactly like what they do when they go to sting, they feel around for a weak spot then go for it.

Maybe the pic i saw of a "Heterometrus Spinifer" was maybe a Pandinus Imperator i dunno. ill be takin the wee darling to an entomologist at some point then ill get to the bottom of it

As for that vaejovid im sure i left a reply to that topic earlier on today.

Cool photos bro.

I dunno looks VERY similar to my h'spin.

hey guys, don't rule out H. Petersii

H. Laoticus wrote:

hey guys, don't rule out H. Petersii

Thats what i think it is but ill need to get in touch wi this entomologist i have the number for.

I think I have the same sp. as you! Same little bit of granulation on the sides of the carapace, membrane/telson colour and everything, although mine's a male
The granulation didn't show very well on the pics that I posted so everyone thought that it was a laoticus. Took me hours of trawling through the net to find an image of one that matched exactly (petersii) at the The Scorpion Files (http://www.ub.ntnu.no/scorpion-files/h_petersii(f).jpg)

Maybe we could get together and try to breed these guys! With all this Het sp. confusion I think my chances of finding a same sp. female online is close to nill

yeah i was wantin to breed them aswell went to buy 1 from the same shop i got this one from and theyde all sold out even tho theyve had about 5 of these just sittin there for like 6 months al of a sudden theyre gone in the 6 weeks that i didnt go to the shop lol if u have a good cloesup of the Chela so i can lok at the big tooth on there so we can be sure of their sexes, but its just a case of how eitgher of us is gona get their scorps from one place to the other lol

I'maa agree that that is petersii.

Yeah im pretty sure its petersii myself, but like i said ill get in touch with that entomologist i have the number for if he cant identify it properly at least it would be cool to know and entomologist lol

The-Scorp-Whisperer wrote:

yeah i was wantin to breed them aswell went to buy 1 from the same shop i got this one from and theyde all sold out even tho theyve had about 5 of these just sittin there for like 6 months al of a sudden theyre gone in the 6 weeks that i didnt go to the shop lol if u have a good cloesup of the Chela so i can lok at the big tooth on there so we can be sure of their sexes, but its just a case of how eitgher of us is gona get their scorps from one place to the other lol

Had a go at taking a photo of the chela (link below), the chela photo is at the end of the album. The pet shop sold him as an emp to me by mistake . They still have a pair of what look like petersii (they say they're spinifers but then again they're the ones that sold me an 'emp'! ) However at £40 each I'm just not inclined to pay up. Student salary and all that.

I drive down to Edinburgh every so often so we could arrange a breeding loan if you have the space to keep him for a bit. Or you could bring her up here once I get my new (larger) tank set up in a couple of weeks. If they manage to breed I'll only want 1/2 scorplings out of it. I'm not allowed to keep too many inverts .

Photos here

40 BLOODY POUND EACH!!!! I got mines for £12.50 and I thought THAT was bad .

Doubt I'd be able to travel up to aberdeen mate, on jobseekers eh so im basically stuck firm here. I have a tank big enough to house them together but if your not happy about having him kept with an angry female i have a 30cmx30cmx30cm exo terra terrarium i could stick him in.

And yeah thats definately a male from the big chela tooth there, its missing on my female so we know theyre compatable

EDIT: Actually i was looking at the pectines on your scorp and they dont seem different from mines so ill send a pic and get someone else to check and make sure for us:

I know, if that's not overcharging I don't know what is. The mistake on the species worked in my favour as their emps are half the price

Yours sounds good. I'll let you know next time I'm passing through Edinburgh and we'll arrange a drop off. You never know might come to something

Still £20 for emps is ridiculous likes i got all 3 of mines for that price lol

Also check the pic in my last post, took so long to edit u replied before i could finish lol

The-Scorp-Whisperer wrote:

EDIT: Actually i was looking at the pectines on your scorp and they dont seem different from mine

I got the impression from reading around that you can't always sex by pectines (although mine look like they are closer together and somewhat larger and more developed in general, especially the inner 'teeth'). There's a page on sexing Heterometrus on the Scorpion Breeding Association website that specifically says that H. petersii are sexed by the presence/absence of a pronounced 'tooth' in the chela. So I still think yours looks like a female.
Check it out:

http://www.freewebs.com/scorpionbreedingassociation/sexingheterometrus.htm

There's a photo comparison too

Kinda a weird coincidence that we both got H. petersii and we're both in Scotland. Maybe the shops that we went to are using the same breeder/supplier?

Oh aye, i was looking at them the other day thats why i asked for a pic of ur scorps chela lol

Not sure what all's going on in this conversation (I blame the similar avatars ), but the pictured pectines are definitely female.

What my picture? im pretty sure we have a male nd female pair between us from the pics of the chela

Yeah, we just went off into our own little scorpion world
We're hoping that we can get together and breed our scorps, since we appear to have the opposite sexes of the same species .

Chela aren't the best way to sex Scorpionidae with the exception of P. cavimanus as far as I know. Whichever one of you didn't post pectine pics, post them and we can confirm or deny that there's a pair (the posted picture is DEFINITELY female).

I'd already posted the pics in another thread and everyone agreed that it was a male. If you want to check, the link to my scorpion album on Facebook is in one of my previous posts, almost at the bottom of the 1st page, where it says 'Photos here'

Don't have an account with an image hosting site so I publish everything on Facebook and link it

I dug around, and yours is male, so between the two of you there's a pair. I wasn't aware that H. petersii has the chela thing like P. cavimanus does, but besides them and H. longimanus the most reliable way of sexing the whole family is by the pectines.

It's helpful that you can sex them that way at any age.