When Alex made no signs of offering the critter to me for photographing I asked him what he planned to do with it. Turns out that he was taking it home to someone with bad rheumatism in his knee, with I assume to be arthritis, and have the scorpion sting the knee to ease the pain. "It hurts at first, like a wasp sting," Alex said, "but in the long run it helps with the rheumatism."

I asked why honeybees weren't used, which I've read about, and he said that they're also effective, but not as good as a scorpion.

While the scorpion was handy I took a close-up of the head area nicely showing the eyes atop the head. It's below:

Besides those two eyes atop the head most species bear two to five pairs of eyes along the front corners of the head. Still, they don't seem to see well and rely mostly on their sense of touch.

from the August 20, 2007 Newsletter issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, QUERÉTARO, MÉXICO
SCORPION EXUVIA
Scorpions, like spiders, have "outside skeletons," or exoskeletons, so as they grow they must molt one husk after the other, the molting process being known as "ecdysis." The molted exoskeleton is called an "exuvia" (plural exuviae). So, the other day, atop the switch that opens the gate, which several of us grope for each night to let in or out those without keys, I found the neat little scorpion exuvia shown at the right.

I'm guessing that this is the exuvia of the same species I profiled in the July 6th Newsletter, CENTRUROIDES GRACILIS, known as the Slender Brown Scorpion or Florida Bark Scorpion, and whose portrait resides at the top of this page.

An interesting feature of that exuvia is that it bears what appears to be an intact stinger, or "telson." The handlens shows a perfectly preserved stinger, but I assume that it's empty of the glands producing venom. Scorpions typically require between five and seven molts to reach maturity.

While confirming the above fancy scorpion terms I learned that most scorpions are slightly fluorescent, something discovered by geologists in Arizona in the 1940s. In the 1970s only about 600 scorpion species were known to science but now over 1520 have been named, thanks mostly to researchers knowing to look for new species at night using "UV flashlights."

from the August 17, 2007 Newsletter issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, QUERÉTARO, MÉXICO
MEDICINAL SCORPIONS

Wednesday my student Lupita brought me a jar of scorpions collected in her house. They're shown above.

That's about two years of scorpions preserved in alcohol. The collection reflects more than Lupita's antipathy for the arachnids; the jar's contents, she assures me, are medicinal.

Lupita says that insect bites stop hurting and itching when scorpion-alcohol is rubbed on them. Old folks tell her that the tincture also works on joints sore with arthritis but she doesn't have arthritis so she isn't sure about that.