Opinions. O. lamorali not in great condition.

Hi,

yesterday I received another Opistophthalmus lamorali. I was expecting an adult to arrive but judging by its size it's definately at least one moult off maturity.

The scorpion arrived through the post and unfortunately the supplier did not add a heat pack to the parcel (why, I don't know?!). Temperatures dropped quite low the night the scorpion was shipped to me.

When I unpacked the scorpion it was obviously very sluggish due to it being cold, this I expected. However, I noticed that the membrane down the left hand side of the mesosoma looked like it was wet. I had a quick look around the area to see if maybe the scorpion had been injured and was leaking some kind of fluid (is this possible in scorpions like it is in T's). I could not see any obvious damage and moved the scorpion into temporary housing as I didn't want to stress it out further after its journey.

After leaving the scorpion in peace for 24 hours I have just been to check on it. There is no more liquid on the mesosoma but there is a weird flakey scab. The best way I can describe it is it looks like dried snot. There are also some other strange things on the scorpion. Parts of the legs look damaged and both the tergites and membrane on the mesosoma look flakey and wrinkled. Overall, the scorpion doesn't look very healthy. It's movements also seem a little shakey and slow. Possible locomotive/nerve damage due to the cold?

The scorpion is quite fat even though it has not eaten for at least 2 months.

Here are a few pics..........







Having not eaten for 2 months and being quite chubby it is quite possible it is in pre-moult. Would a scorpion end up in such bad condition before moulting though?

Could it be some kind of disease or bacterial/fungal infection that is causing the flakey cuticle and membrane?

Look forward to hearing any ideas

Is the membrane ruptured? From the pic it looks like it.

Yer thats what I think must have happened during transit. It does look to have sealed itself up with the scab type thing. There is no more fluid on the scorpion.

It will probably be alright after the upcoming moult, wont it?
I wouldnt worry about the temps dropping at night as Namibia has very cold nightime temps.

And beautiful specimen btw. Looks nice and fat.

What do you think of the overall flakeyness of it though. I've seen plenty of scorpions in pre-moult and they often look a little 'tired' and dull but this one looks like its been in a car crash and scraped a load of its 'skin' (cuticle) off.

I mean look at the legs. It looks like paint thats pealed off an iron fence lol.

On a side note: do you have any info. about climate/habitat data of these guys. I know that they are found in the Brandberg Massif but as for comprehensive info. like humdity, day/night and seasonal temperatures is difficult to find. Also whether these guys aestivate, hibernate etc???

Callum, I think only time will tell.
The fluids in a scorpions body are equivalent to the blood in our bodies. It all depends on how much it has lost.

I do wish it will recover, and wish you like with him/her.

Keep your eye on that injury. I'd keep a tube of super glue on hand in case the "wound" opens up again, and use it to stop the "bleeding". I'd offer it a water dish too at the moment, to establish any lost body fluids.

Regarding temps I would keep it in the 30 degrees celsius and a night time drop to the lower 20's. Humidity I would not know as the scorp could come from the coastal area where humidity is high or more inland where the humidity would be between 40 and 50%. Guessing from other Opistophthalmus spp they become less active during winter when they stay in their burrows almost all the time. I would hazard a guess and say they do aestivate as the temps where they come from sometimes exceed 40 degrees celsius.
I dont know about the flakiness, just keep her well heated for now and maybe everything will be fine after the moult. Keeping fingers crossed its nothing serious.

How is your new female doing? Any improvement in condition?

Let me just get this straight ... You receive a scorpion that appears to have a damp patch running down it's side but apart from that no apparent sign of damage .. 24 hrs later it has some kind of coalesced snot on it's side (same side as the damp area i presume) and it's chitin has gone from shine and lustre to what we see here.

Hmm, it sounds to me as if either your scorpion was damaged before transit or it became damaged during transit and even though you couldn't initially see it, it had received some kind of puncture wound on it's left side.
Was there any substrate or newspaper in the packing? .. If it had been loosely packed, as in the scorpion had plenty of room to move about (or be thrown about) then it's not unthinkable that a particularly hard jostling could have thrown the scorpion onto a folded pointy bit of newspaper or similar. If that wasn't the case then i'd be thinking that it was damaged before it was sent.
Still...that's not going to help your scorpion now...So, what can you do about it. Unfortunately not really much. Having some kind of inert sealant handy if it should spring a leak again and providing it with correct environment and low stress, is of course the obvious ones but apart from that not much else.

I've never seen that kind of flaky appearance before but on close up it looks to my eyes like some kind of acute dehydration (but then why does the body itself look hydrated and wouldn't a dehydration first rob the body of fluids, not the exoskeleton!) or maybe some kind of corrosion as in a oil based chemical agent that has removed the chitins protective outer layer and embrittled the deeper layer.
Did you notice any particular odour when you opened the package or greasy fingerprints from the sender on the outside of the package, indicating that he may have had something on his hands when he was packing the scorpion.
Still...for that hypothesis to be right chemicals would also really have to be the cause of the puncture wound and that seems kinda unlikely to me.
Whatever the case may be let us know how it turns out....If it still looks the same now without any further degradation of it's exoskeleton then fingers crossed whatever caused it has halted..It looks to me to as if it's in pre-moult so hopefully it's just got to get on the other side of that before it's fine again..

Hi Den,

yes the scorpion must have been injured during transit. It was packed a little looser than I would have, which meant if the parcel had been handled roughly the scorpion would have had enough room to 'bounce' around a little bit. The leaking of fluid seems to have healed now. I have not noticed any more dampness on the scorpion and it has not 'deflated' which would suggest it still had an open wound somewhere.

I have kept a waterdish in with the scorpion so that it can re-hydrate.

As for the flakeyness, that is how the scorpion arrived, so whether it has been like that for some time or it developed the condition whilst travelling for what ever reason, I don't know. I think it is more likely the former as I really can't think of anything that would cause such degradation of the chitin in such a short amount of time, unless like you say, it is some kind of harmful chemical that caused it. However, if that was the case though, I would have thought it would have probably died by now.


I hate confrontation and don't want to go complaining to the seller, plus he's a really decent guy. But, I don't understand why he didn't warn me about the condition it was in, if it was indeed like that when it was in his care.

How is this one now Callum?

If sellers don't know / hear about problems, they can't sort them out

Hello Jake,

you grave digger

What ever it is, it's not had a negetive effect on its health so far i.e. it is still alive and behaving normally. I asked various people about it and no one has a clue why its cuticle is like that.

Haha, I hate confronting people about stuff. Admittedly I was a little worried seeing the weird condition it arrived in, but when it carried on doing normal scorpion stuff I forgot about it really. It is almost definately a subadult but is yet to moult. Hopefully it will do so soon.

It was a long time ago now, but can you remember what condition it was in when it arrived with you (probably should have asked you in March lol)

How are table bookings going for the YIS? I'm looking forward to it.

Looked like the below picture when it was sent, which as you can see, doesn't look anything like now.



Is it still as fat? Maybe there's something behind that is it still is?

YIS is getting slowly sorted, have a few tables booked so far from Exotic-pets.co.uk, exopet, etc along with TSS, plus BTS will be there as well

Just sorting everything out for the show, and the re-opening of Invert Imports in the new year and everything else is just a little hectic ATM

It's still very fat. Who knows what it is that caused the oddness. If it dies I think I'll send it to someone who can hopefully properly identify what it is. Given that even some very knowledgeable people had never seen anything like this, it would be interesting to get an answer.

Great :-) I'm umming and ahhhing about booking a table as I have got quite a few slings that I've held on to.

Yeah, it would be interesting to get some idea of what it is.

At least she's still around.

You could always just grab a table and sell half to another hobbyist / seller or such if you don't have enough to fill a table