Hairy Desert Scorpion

The Giant Hairy Scorpion is the largest scorpion in North America, and can, when fully grown, reach a length of about six inched long in body. They are brown, with yellow pincher’s, with brown hairs covering their bodies from which the name comes.

Named for the hairs that cover its body, the Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion is the largest scorpion

Their long tails are tipped with a poison gland that is bulb like in nature, and accompanies a stinger that helps them to deliver the poison they inject.

Being an arachnid they are also fitted with four pairs of legs.

The Giant Hairy Scorpion lives in the deserts of Arizona, California and Southern Utah and Nevada.

Hiding under rocks during the extreme heat of the day, the Giant Hairy Scorpion will come out at night to hunt, using the hairs on their bodies to detect the heat of the prey and hunt it down.

Primarily they use their pincers to overpower their prey, rather than the poison.

Their poison is also not particularly dangerous or lethal to humans, but it is in fact painful.

All scorpions will glow when held under a black light; this is due to their exoskeleton. The desert hairy scorpion appears blue-green when exposed to UV light.

After a courtship “dance” of sorts, the male scorpion will guide the female over the top of his sperm packet which she will take inside her body, where the egg will mate with it.

The gestation period for these arachnids is sometimes lengthy, up to a year, when the female will give birth to live young, up to as many as twenty of them, which crawl very rapidly up onto the mothers back, where they will remain until they molt and a little longer… after about two weeks they will climb down and go off on their own.

Desert hairy scorpions eat primarily insects and other arachnids.

The Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion is not endangered and in fact, in some areas is seen as a pest species.

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