Scorpion's survival over adverse living conditions

GS wrote:

EDIT: This is a split topic from https://scorpionforum.darkbb.com/t8123-buthacus-leptochelys-strange-death.
Please continue.

scorpions are amazing creatures. they can be frozen for years and still be alive once thawed out, they can cross miles of sand in 140 degree heat, and can live completely submerged in water for days. your scorpion had to have died of old age or drank something toxic. if you give your scorpions tap water, then that could be the problem. tap water often contains lead, mercury, sulfur, chlorine, and other chemicals, detergents, hydrocarbons, and bacteria. we can drink tap water all day and it doesn't hurt us, because the portions are so small compared to our bodies. plus our bodies have adapted to it. what you have to realize is that scorpions are little and lack complex immune systems. even though they may not drink often, each time they do, it's a lot compared to their body weight. imagine drinking 2 or 3 gallons of water in 1 sitting because it might be another week or two before you find water again. if we drank that much tap water, we would die too. i only give mine spring water. every few months, i get a 30 pack of bottled spring water for $12. think about it, you spend more than that feeding them.

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scorpions are amazing creatures.

Agreed..

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they can be frozen for years and still be alive once thawed out,

That's a new one for me..I'd like to see some documentation if you could point the way for me.....and i've lost a few scorpions because of cold weather during transport...something don't make sense....or maybe you're talking about a specific scorpion?....and years!

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and can live completely submerged in water for days.

That's a new one for me as well.....I was under the impression that scorpions took air in through small micro openings in their exoskeleton which then has the oxygen pulled out of it once it gets to the book lungs......I know the outer layer of chitin is hydrophobic, but that enough air can be trapped to keep the scorpion alive under water for days is something i've not heard before....

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if you give your scorpions tap water, then that could be the problem. tap water often contains lead, mercury, sulfur, chlorine, and other chemicals, detergents, hydrocarbons, and bacteria.

Ahhh....i think that depends on your local water authority..Water quality fluctuates greatly..not just from country to country but also within individual countries....and if plain tap water was responsible for scorpion deaths i kinda think it'd be a common occurrence...

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i only give mine spring water

Good on you...i only use distilled water myself but thats just to cut down chalk deposits..allthough I'd have no hesitations offering tap water for drinking if for some reason i couldn't get hold of distilled....Another thing is, i'm sure spring water has varying traces of particles as well....just as you say, not in harmful to human quantities

den, i'll do my best to find the documentation and provide links for you. i've personally never frozen a scorpion, but scientists and other researchers have made claims that they can survive for years like that. i don't know about years, but i know first hand that in the deserts of the middle east and africa; it will drop well below freezing at night and reach 140 during the day. so getting frozen is something desert types have to do every night to survive in the wild. then you have scorpions that live in rainforest that have flooding and mudslides all year long. if the scorpion gets buried under wet soupy mud, then it has to be able to breath long enough to dig it's self out once the mud has dried days later. if drowning and freezing could kill scorpions, then they wouldn't exist at all. on the topic of water. i use spring water because it still has essential vitamins and minerals for growth and survival. even as tough and adapt as we are as human beings; distilled water is unhealthy to us. drinking distilled water washes the essential vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes out of our bodies through a process called osmosis and causes a potentially lethal condition called hyponatremia. if it's not good for me, then it's probably not good for my pets either.

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in the deserts of the middle east and africa; it will drop well below freezing at night and reach 140 during the day. so getting frozen is something desert types have to do every night to survive in the wild.

Ah, i see.....even though the relative temperature of some desert areas may well get under 0c at night i don't think the scorpions or other desert dwelling critters perceive it that way...Most dig under the sand or get themselves one way or another under ground level.......simply because, as any foundry worker will tell you, sand is a great insulator....I don't think scorpions actually freeze at night time in any deserts.
But i might be wrong, i don't know..i just usually run with what seems to me to be common sense....and nature is full of surprises.

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flooding and mudslides all year long

I was actually based in Belize for quite a stretch when i was in the army and ended up wandering (weren't really wandering) the jungle for weeks at a time sometimes..There were floods and mudslides but they didn't go on all year...just seasonal, the same as anywhere else...and always contained to a local area.

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if the scorpion gets buried under wet soupy mud, then it has to be able to breath long enough to dig it's self out once the mud has dried days later

I think if the material was so soupy most scorpions would die in those circumstances actually.......

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if it's not good for me, then it's probably not good for my pets either.

I've heard that argument before but it doesn't really wash mate.....If you was pouring distilled water into a clean dish then yeh..maybe i guess....but most of us don't do that..we have a shallow dish with pebbles or crushed small stones in it and then put the water into that...once it dries out you put more water in etc etc....every time that dish is filled up the water receives minerals and whatever nutrients coat the pebbles.....unless everything is sterile of course.....The trace amounts were talking about are really just that...in fact..distilled water with only trace elements received from outside sources is probably more akin to natural water than anything that comes from a bottle or tap.....besides.....scorpions also receive moisture from the air and their food.......I personally don't think distilled water as a water source for scorpions is any problem whatsoever......Still, again..what do i know..i might be wrong...i'm just running with my kind of common sense again plus my experience with distilled water.

Den wrote:

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and can live completely submerged in water for days.

That's a new one for me as well.....I was under the impression that scorpions took air in through small micro openings in their exoskeleton which then has the oxygen pulled out of it once it gets to the book lungs......I know the outer layer of chitin is hydrophobic, but that enough air can be trapped to keep the scorpion alive under water for days is something i've not heard before....

This is getting off topic, but....
You are right, scorpions breathe by taking in air through eight opening under their body called spiracles, which then has the oxygen pulled out of it once it gets to the book lungs. However, scorpions have the ability to close their spiracles.
I have heard of some Pandinus and Heterometrus sp staying submerged for over half an hour. I've seen my own emp stay submerged for almost 20 minutes once.
So yes scorpions can be completely submerged and survive. I'm not sure how long they can keep this up though. I'm skeptical that they could survive for several days.

a few sources that i could find for you.

http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/not-so-scary-scorpions

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/claythompson/32953

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/scorpions-can-live-for-as-much-as-a-year-without-eating/

http://www.scorpionguy.com/common-qs-about-scorpions/true-false-thins-about-scorpions/

http://www.moondragon.org/health/disorders/scorpionsting.html

http://www.bumblebee.org/invertebrates/Scorpions.htm

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/scorpion/

http://www.examiner.com/nature-in-phoenix/scorpion-brown-bag-it-and-scorpion-hunt-with-ranger-b-at-usery-mountain-regional-park

http://animal.discovery.com/invertebrates/scorpion/

hope this was helpful. remember, nothing in nature is certain. it still rains in the desert and there are still droughts in the jungle.

Scorpion19981000 wrote:

This is getting off topic..

Thanks for the heads-up. Topic has been split and is now inline with the discussion.
Please continue.

Regards,
GS

on the death of my Buthacus leptochelys it had no interest in the food. After I removed the food and offered water ( in the small pill bottle cap that holds about 6 drops of water) I noticed it holding and trying to pull around the cap, holding it by his chelicerea and trying to sting it several times. After that I noticed it crawl into the water and then be found to have died in a 2 hour time. The water I provided it with was some Good Value brand wal mart water. It was labeled spring water but was labeled to have been UV treated, reverse osmosis processed. None of the other inverts I gave the same water to have shown any ill effects from the water.

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a few sources that i could find for you.

Thanks for posting those links up mate but what i really meant was non critical sources, as in sources relating to scientific papers..
If i took your sources at face value and added to that that i knew little or nothing about scorpions then on the face of it it all seems very logical...Trouble is though....most of those sources (admitted i haven't looked at the last 2) were basically written by columnists who's writings are usually more along the lines of hearsay...and i do know a bit about scorpions.
I'm not trying to knock you down mate, not at all....just trying to clarify.

One genus of scorpion might be able to handle temps well over the 100 degrees while another genus would be fried at those temps.
Making blanket statements that scorpions can do this and that extreme thing is inherently incorrect..some can and some can't.

People from Tibet can run around in high altitude thin air all day...You and i can't do that without being whacked out..some dogs can run faster than us...other short legged varieties can't....It's all in the distinction.

Hi Apollyon,

scorpions are definately survivors and can deal with some very harsh environmental conditions.

However, whether thay can survive underwater for days and also be frozen for years seems fairly dubious. I had a look at some of the sites you have linked and most of them are providing un-referenced 'facts' and seem to be fairly basic, and also not consistent with each other.

One of the sites states that scopions can survive for 2 days submerged in water, another says 6 days, and another 3 - 5 days. None provide any evidence. Scorpions can slow their metabolism down and require little oxygen to survive. When it gets very hot, some species will actually close their spiracles to reduce water loss, obviously when they do this they will not be able to take in any air. Whether they can close them for several days I don't know, but they can definately ''hold their breath'' for a lot longer than we can lol.

As for being frozen, the Nat Geo site does say that ''Researchers have even frozen scorpions overnight, only to put them in the sun the next day and watch them thaw out and walk away.'' Maybe it is possible in some species, such as those found high in the Himalayas and Alps where they will experience, and have adapted to, very cold and icy weather during the winter. However, it does then go on to say that scorpions would not normally be able to survive sub-zero temps unless they are able to burrow to escape extremes of temperature. Again though, no referencing to papers/research i.e. proof, that scorpions can really be frozen.

The examiner site talking about Ranger B states that Ranger B explains scorpions can be frozen in blocks of ice for several days and there is anecdotal evidence they can survive being frozen for several months. Different 'facts' to the Nat Geo site. Where are they getting them all from?? Again no referencing to back them up.

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if some scorpion species could really be frozen, at least for short periods of time anyway. Some species that live at high elevations and some desert species do have a high resistance to cold temps. Anti-freeze proteins have been found in at least one species and other mechanisms may also be used to combat freezing temps. I don't know, yes some species can survive below zero temps but whether they can be literally frozen into a block of ice and then defrosted, I've never seen any work or evidence to prove this is true. By the looks of things little research has been done on this topic. Get yourself to university and discover it for yourself lol.

One fact about scorpions I do love though......

Have you ever joked with people about cockroaches being the only things left if world war 3 happened? Wrong. If there was a nuclear holocaust, scorpions (well some species) would be the new rulers of the world haha.

Some desert Buthidae species, notably adult Androctonus amoreuxi has an LD50 of 820 Gy. Compare that with a monkey (the closest animal to a human they tested on) which has an LD50 of just 3 - 5 Gy, then if WW3 happened it would no longer be the planet of the apes, rather planet of the scorpions. How geeky did I just sound haha. The reasons why they have such a high radioresistance is fairly complicated and not all scorpions have such a high resistance but I think it's a pretty cool fact.

Of course, as always I take so long to type that someone sneeks in a post before me.

Dang you Den!!!!

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Dang you Den!!!! Smile

Chuckles...no sweat mate..your reply was better than mine anyway..

yes i did know about their resistance to radiation, but i figured it was irrelevant info regarding the "strange death" of the scorpion. i'm not trying to state that all scorpions are indestructable. as i stated previously: "from what i've read" they can survive these things. the point of my statement was that this guy was doing his best to take care of his pet scorpion and it died for unknown reasons. he assumed drowning, and i was just trying to get the idea across to him that it wouldn't have drowned in a few hours. also, i don't think that temp or humidity being slightly off would've done it either. so unless this guy microwaved his scorpion, i didn't feel it was worth metioning there radiation resistance in the other thread. but now we have a new thread on survival, so thank you for bringing it up. and for those who don't already know. black lights are bad for all arachnids. so if you like to make your scorpions glow, you're killing them. stop it. many sources like the ones previously posted say that scorpions have really bad vision. well they have 8-10 eyes on average, and they can't close them. i would expect that they would have great vision. but then again, if you were nocturnal and someone kept shining concentrated UV light in your eyes; how good would your vision be? also scorpions can slow there metabolism alowing them to go for long periods of time without having to eat. when kept indoors with little room to run around, they will slow their metabolic rate and often refuse food. crickets and meal worms are generally harmless, so if the scorpion is not hungry; then it will ignore them. but if the scorpion feels threatened, then it will fight for survival increasing it's metabolic rate and making it hungry again. i've found that mice and large wolf spiders will quickly give a scorpion their appetite back. (don't do this if your scorpion is under 3" long) most scorpions can easily take down a spider twice their size, but i would only recomend giving mice to fast agressive and medically significant scorpions.
anyway, those are all the interesting "facts" (mostly speculation at this point) about scorpions that i could think of. if you have more interesting "facts", please post them so the rest of us can learn something new.

I wasn't having a go man. I mentioned the radioresistance thing when the original thread got turned into this one.

I'm just not really sure where you are going with all this..........

Yes, UV light is harmful to all living things but using a black light or UV torch to find scorpions or view them breifly is not likely to be harmful. I have never heard of anyone reporting any adverse effects to their scorpions when occasionally illuminating them with UV light. Just as it doesn't do us any damage when we are using said UV torches/black lights to look at our scorpions.

Scorpions don't see things how we do. Their lateral eyes only perceive variations in light intensity and their median eyes do give an image, but one that is no where near as 'sharp' as ours. They can also sense light from some kind of sensory organ on the end of their tail.

What do you mean by scorpions slow their metabolic rate down when kept indoors because they can't run around? One thing scorpions are really good at is not doing anything at all i.e. not moving and not eating. This is completely normal. In the wild they may experience seasons when the climate is to harsh to be active. Whether thats because it is to hot, cold, dry, a lack of prey or a combination of these factors. When conditions are harsh scorpions will move into a hide/burrow and remain inactive until the harsh times have passed. In captivity scorpions will also become inactive. This can be for a variety of different reasons such as their inbuilt 'seasonal clock' (can't remember if their is a proper name for this) telling them it's time to fast, or a sub-adult scorpion going in to pre-moult, stopping eating and hiding away and the many other reasons that endlessly worry so many scorpion keepers but in reality is completely normal scorpion behaviour.

If a scorpion doesn't want to eat you shouldn't force it to. Especially by using large wolf spiders or mice. In the confined environment of a tank you are asking for the scorpion to be injured by the mouse or spider as they try to defend themselves. Ethically it is also so wrong to put both the prey and predator in a situation where they will be both highly stressed and the scorpion could end up maimed or even dead. There is also evidence that regularly feeding scorpions with mice could be damaging to them. Basically, stick to suitably sized invertebrate prey that can not harm the scorpion and will be quickly dispatched when captured.

i know you weren't picking on me, nor was i picking on you. that's just my dry sense of humor trying to lighten up the conversation. where i was originally going, was to show our friend with the dead scorpion that his scorpion didn't drown. but now this thread is about scorpion survival. so now we're just throwing in random scorpion "facts" so that people newer to the hobby can use this as a reference when they have a question about their new pet. because of this, i'm trying to encourage others to add information that they've gathered so everyone can read this thread and learn something. that's where we're going now. so if you have general uncomon knowledge about scorpions. please share with the rest of us. and as far as giving them mice, i just do this to perk their apetite. i never let my scorpions eat the mice because they have the wrong nutrients and will cause dificulty in molting. my P. liosoma is about 3" and very active, but never seems to eat. if i put in a small fuzzy mouse, then he will kill in in 3-4 minutes on average while recieving no damage because the mouse can barely walk anyway. after that, he will go eat a few crickets. my emperor is about 4 inches long, so a 3/4" spider is no chalenge for her. after she kills and eats it, she will run around picking up crickets and eating them like candy bars. she'll usually eat about 5 or 6. after eating, they become more active and energetic for a few days before going into hiding for another few weeks. don't worry, i'm not going to put anything in with my scorpions that could potentially hurt them. it just drives me crazy when they kill crickets and worms just because they're in the way, but don't actually eat them. about their vision and UV exposure. i never exposed my scorpions to UV nor do i ever plan to, and i've found that scorpions have great dexterity (hand eye cordination). when they approach an object, they imediately climb or dig under it withought bumping into it. when they're hungry and you introduce food into the the enclosure; they will charge at it at full speed, grab it, and sting it without missing in the slightest way. this kind of precision would not be possible if they could only make out light variations and blurs. if you ask me, i think they have pretty good vision. anyway, i didn't know about their ability to sense light with an organ in their tail or about their internal clock. so thank you for the info i just learned something. and that's what this thread is about.

A scorpions sensory abilities are far more complicated than just simple hand eye coordination, in fact I doubt they even do this. Go and read up on google about setae, pectines and trichobothria.

Scorpions really do not rely on their eyes to be able to function. How do you think they move around in the dark of a burrow? And how come eyeless species of scorpions exist and seem to be able to do exactly what a scorpion with eyes can? Finally, and most obviously, why would a nocturnal animal, with poor eyesight, rely on hand eye coordination to capture prey etc? That would not make sense as it would not be able to do so at the time when they are most active.

Fair enough, what you have observed may look like they have great hand eye coordination but really, yes they may be able to sort of see an object there but they will be relying on a lot of other methods to sense what it is and what it should do about it.

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this kind of precision would not be possible if they could only make out light variations and blurs.

It's pretty well established that scorpions do in fact have bad eyesight......The reason they can be so accurate is because of vibrations, not eyesight.

Bats have bad eyesight yet can pluck flying insects out of the air. We know that this is because bats have a kind of active radar in the form of acoustics....Scorpions don't have the same active radar .. their radar is the passive type.
This means they send out no acoustic single but have the ability to pick up incredibly small vibrations and fluctuations in air movements..They can do this because their setae (the small bristles that cover their legs and body) are so sensitive...Their eyes are second to this sense the same way as a bats eyes are second to their radar and a dogs eyes are second to it's sense of smell.

fair enough. i just don't understand how they can tell the difference between a wolf spider and a cricket of the same size a few inches away. when a cricket approaches one of my scorpions, they just sit there and let the cricket climb over them. but when i put a wolf spider in there with them, they react almost imediately. if it gets with in 6 or 7inches of one of them, they will raise their stinger and look like they're ready for a fight. how can they tell the difference between a predator and a harmless insect when it's that far away? if they can't see the difference, then do they have some sense of smell that helps them differentiate?

apollyon wrote:

fair enough. i just don't understand how they can tell the difference between a wolf spider and a cricket of the same size a few inches away. when a cricket approaches one of my scorpions, they just sit there and let the cricket climb over them. but when i put a wolf spider in there with them, they react almost imediately. if it gets with in 6 or 7inches of one of them, they will raise their stinger and look like they're ready for a fight. how can they tell the difference between a predator and a harmless insect when it's that far away? if they can't see the difference, then do they have some sense of smell that helps them differentiate?

Scorpions could probably tell the difference between a cricket and a spider by using their pectines. Also spiders would make different vibrations and air movements than a cricket. For example, a cricket has six legs, which would cause different vibrations than a spider's eight. Crickets are also always moving their antennae, causing small air movements that a spider would not cause.

makes sense. thanks guys for explaining that. i'll come to you guys next time i have a question.