Redellimom
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2014
- Messages
- 55
Hi everyone, my name is Jen and I am new to Arachnoboards. To give you some background on myself, I am a Microbiology major (junior) at Texas-State University in San Marcos, Texas. I have an AS degree in Biology , a level 1 certificate in Biotechnology, and will be graduating with an AAS degree in Biotechnology this spring. I have always been interested in animals since I can remember, and have drawn, taken photos, kept, worked with and studied hundreds of species. Though I have never kept scorpions for long before, since moving to the hill country and seeing them daily, and since I am working on fluorescent compounds in a lab, I have a deep interest in studying them, their behavior, habitat, food, fluorescence, and genetics. My children also have a deep love and respect for nature, and an abundance of curiosity I want to foster into a love of science like my own (though it seems they already possess that!). I wanted to start a blog, but that is still in the works, so I thought I would share my photos and experiences working with scorpions here on AB.
Anyway, I am going to try to attempt to photo-document the growth of P. redelli, the central Texas cave scorpion, from birth to adult (behavior and beyond!). I live in Wimberley, TX, and had seen one of these beauties before, under a rock about 20 feet from our home. I took pictures of her, but let her go. For days I researched the species and could not find much about them online except for a couple research papers and one Texas Parks and Wildlife article. There are some other accounts, and some keepers here on AB that have them. But I wasn't happy with the limited information and pictures I could find, though they were all very informative. I looked for her for a few weeks with no luck! We live right on the Balcones Escarpment where this species is endemic, so I thought it's be easier to find one! But after literally finding fifty or more striped bark scorpions, including a female covered in scorplings, I was ready to give up!
Here is the gorgeous female found under a rock (she looks to be ready to pop with babies!):
And the C. vittatus with babies I found:
Then, I found one, when not looking for one at all, of course! On September 7th we found a beautiful P. redelli female climbing up the outside of our house around 2am. I caught her and took some pictures, and felt at the time that she was awful chubby. I entertained the idea that perhaps she was heavy with babies, and that we keep her to see if I was right, and take more pictures of the species and learn more about their behavior and care requirements in captivity. She was extremely calm and docile compared to the bark scorpions, and would let me hold her and take photos and videos of her in normal and UV light. My brother named her Scorpinox. She seemed to be eating just fine and growing bigger as well (well, rounder that is!), happy in her large plastic shoebox that I made into her home (using soil, sand, rocks and oak leaves from around our property).
The night we found and caught Scorpinox:
Then on September 28th, when checking on her, I found she had about 15 babies clinging to he back! I was right! And so excited! I took pictures and after she tried to sting me -for the first time in 3 weeks, I thought I better leave her alone. The next day I checked on her again and the number of scorplings had easily doubled! She also appeared much calmer. I realized then she had been giving birth the day before when I was taking pictures. No wonder she tried to sting me!
Now that the scorplings were roughly 24 hours old, and she was calm as usual (she even crawled right onto my hand as she wandered around her home) I managed to pick up one of the babies with the blunt side of a pair of tweezers, and took some photos. The little guy (or gal) was only 3.5-4mm from chelicerae through the mesosoma; the metasoma maybe 2.5mm in length. What tiny babies! Yet it was hard to imagine they were all some how packed inside her little body! I wish I had a way to weigh them, but I am not sure they would register on any scale I have at home. Perhaps I can use the analytical balance at the lab! I will ask tonight if that is a possibility. Anyway, I took some more photos of one of the scorplings today, at 3 days old, and tried to get a picture of the lot of them on the ruler, but it's hard when Scorpinox keeps climbing up my arm!
More photos to come! Thanks for reading and looking at my pictures!
Anyway, I am going to try to attempt to photo-document the growth of P. redelli, the central Texas cave scorpion, from birth to adult (behavior and beyond!). I live in Wimberley, TX, and had seen one of these beauties before, under a rock about 20 feet from our home. I took pictures of her, but let her go. For days I researched the species and could not find much about them online except for a couple research papers and one Texas Parks and Wildlife article. There are some other accounts, and some keepers here on AB that have them. But I wasn't happy with the limited information and pictures I could find, though they were all very informative. I looked for her for a few weeks with no luck! We live right on the Balcones Escarpment where this species is endemic, so I thought it's be easier to find one! But after literally finding fifty or more striped bark scorpions, including a female covered in scorplings, I was ready to give up!
Here is the gorgeous female found under a rock (she looks to be ready to pop with babies!):
And the C. vittatus with babies I found:
Then, I found one, when not looking for one at all, of course! On September 7th we found a beautiful P. redelli female climbing up the outside of our house around 2am. I caught her and took some pictures, and felt at the time that she was awful chubby. I entertained the idea that perhaps she was heavy with babies, and that we keep her to see if I was right, and take more pictures of the species and learn more about their behavior and care requirements in captivity. She was extremely calm and docile compared to the bark scorpions, and would let me hold her and take photos and videos of her in normal and UV light. My brother named her Scorpinox. She seemed to be eating just fine and growing bigger as well (well, rounder that is!), happy in her large plastic shoebox that I made into her home (using soil, sand, rocks and oak leaves from around our property).
The night we found and caught Scorpinox:
Then on September 28th, when checking on her, I found she had about 15 babies clinging to he back! I was right! And so excited! I took pictures and after she tried to sting me -for the first time in 3 weeks, I thought I better leave her alone. The next day I checked on her again and the number of scorplings had easily doubled! She also appeared much calmer. I realized then she had been giving birth the day before when I was taking pictures. No wonder she tried to sting me!
Now that the scorplings were roughly 24 hours old, and she was calm as usual (she even crawled right onto my hand as she wandered around her home) I managed to pick up one of the babies with the blunt side of a pair of tweezers, and took some photos. The little guy (or gal) was only 3.5-4mm from chelicerae through the mesosoma; the metasoma maybe 2.5mm in length. What tiny babies! Yet it was hard to imagine they were all some how packed inside her little body! I wish I had a way to weigh them, but I am not sure they would register on any scale I have at home. Perhaps I can use the analytical balance at the lab! I will ask tonight if that is a possibility. Anyway, I took some more photos of one of the scorplings today, at 3 days old, and tried to get a picture of the lot of them on the ruler, but it's hard when Scorpinox keeps climbing up my arm!
More photos to come! Thanks for reading and looking at my pictures!