Juvenile Heterometrus ID

Hi all,

This is a juvenile, 2-3" sold to me as Asian Forest Scorpion but the staff in the shop weren't sure.











It would also be useful to me in future if you could explain your reasons.

Thanks in advance.

Anyone got any ideas? It's the one I'm most keen to identify.

It's more difficult to ID immature scorpions...particularly Heterometrus.


Frankly I'm not sure.

It's not a H. spinifer, nor does it particularly look like a H. longimanus.

Male or female?

Does it have carapace granulation? From the first pic it doesn't look like it has any, but in the later pics it looks like it has some. Might just be my bad vision, reflection, or the angle of the pics.

Yeah it has granulation around the edge of the carapace.

I asked on another forum, and also came up with this being petersii too.

Just out of curiosity, what makes you immediately rule out spinifer?

Probably H. petersii then.

H. spinifer don't have dark telsons, and your scorp doesn't have a pronounced internal tubercle on the patella. Looking at the pics again, I see a very small one, but it's nowhere near as pronounced as it is in H. spinifer.

EDIT:
Here are the ID keys with examples:

Heterometrus petersii:

Heterometrus spinifer:

Thanks for your help, just gonna take a look at your youtube channel now

Haha, no problem.

Not much to look at on my youtube channel I'm afraid....video function on my camera wasn't great to begin with, now it's completely unusable. Still, I've got a decent video of my emp walking around.