a long tail. Scorpions are more cluttered with obnoxiously useful hardware than a Swiss Army knife.
They travel under cover of darkness. They prey on insects and spiders, as well as the occasional small lizard or mouse. They kill people tooâsurprisingly many in some countriesâthough only while defending themselves, or by mistake. A scorpion drops from the thatched roof of a house into a babyâs crib, a young child runs barefoot through a garden, an adult carelessly picks up a piece of firewood, and whammo. In Mexico, at least until recently, more than a thousand humans died each year from scorpion stings. Most of those victims were kids. Another 69,000 Mexicans annually survive a sting that is at least bad enough to report. In Brazil the death rate for young children stung by scorpions is almost one in five, and a single Brazilian city recorded a hundred fatalities in a year. Algeria is another zone of high jeopardy, as are Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Trinidad. Scorpions can be found nearly everywhere in the warm latitudes, jungle and mountain terrain as well as desert, but among different species there is wide variation in the potency of the venom.
Some venoms merely cause local swelling and pain. Others attack the nervous system, resulting in high pulse rate, irregular breathing, feelings of fright or excitement, impaired vision, vomiting, and a range of other symptoms of which the final, if itcomes to that, is complete respiratory failure. Death by suffocation, out there under the clear equatorial sky.
J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson, a British zoologist who spent part of his career as a museum keeper in the Sudan, described the whole baleful sequence: âFirst, a feeling of tightness develops in the throat so that the victim tries to clear his throat of an imaginary phlegm. The tongue develops a feeling of thickness and speech becomes difficult. The victim next becomes restless and there may be slight, involuntary twitching of the muscles. Small children at this stage will not be still: Some attempt to climb up the wall or the sides of their cot. A series of sneezing spasms is accompanied by a continuous flow of fluid from nose and mouth which may form a copious froth. Occasionally the rate of heartbeat is considerably increased. Convulsions follow, the arms are flailed about and the extremities become quite blue before death occurs.â This progression of symptoms, he says, closely resembles poisoning with strychnine.
Cloudsley-Thompson might be talking about a sting from Androtonus australis, the fearsome North African species said to have venom as toxic as a cobraâsâbut he isnât. Heâs talking about an American scorpion called Centruroides sculpturatus. Most infamous of the forty species found in the southern United States, C. sculpturatus is familiarly known as the bark scorpion, from its habit of hiding beneath loose and fallen pieces of tree bark. During one twenty-year period it accounted for sixty-four deaths in just the state of Arizona.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
The Cloudsley-Thompson scenario and that last statistic, though, may both be unduly alarming. C. sculpturatus is quite common in Arizona, and many people are stung by it without suffering any harrowing effects. One of those victims, Steve Prchal of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, describes the experience this way: âTake a sharp needle and jab it into your hand. Hold a match or a lighter to it for a couplehours. Then add the needles-and-pins sensation you have when a foot falls asleep. Thatâs what a bark scorpion sting feels like.â Evidently the reaction can range anywhere from modest discomfort to horribleawful death, depending upon the body size and general health of the person stung, as well as other obscure factors, including luck. Best to steer clear of scorpion habitat, then, when you feel especially frail or unlucky.
Steve Prchal got his sting during a family camping
They travel under cover of darkness. They prey on insects and spiders, as well as the occasional small lizard or mouse. They kill people tooâsurprisingly many in some countriesâthough only while defending themselves, or by mistake. A scorpion drops from the thatched roof of a house into a babyâs crib, a young child runs barefoot through a garden, an adult carelessly picks up a piece of firewood, and whammo. In Mexico, at least until recently, more than a thousand humans died each year from scorpion stings. Most of those victims were kids. Another 69,000 Mexicans annually survive a sting that is at least bad enough to report. In Brazil the death rate for young children stung by scorpions is almost one in five, and a single Brazilian city recorded a hundred fatalities in a year. Algeria is another zone of high jeopardy, as are Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Trinidad. Scorpions can be found nearly everywhere in the warm latitudes, jungle and mountain terrain as well as desert, but among different species there is wide variation in the potency of the venom.
Some venoms merely cause local swelling and pain. Others attack the nervous system, resulting in high pulse rate, irregular breathing, feelings of fright or excitement, impaired vision, vomiting, and a range of other symptoms of which the final, if itcomes to that, is complete respiratory failure. Death by suffocation, out there under the clear equatorial sky.
J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson, a British zoologist who spent part of his career as a museum keeper in the Sudan, described the whole baleful sequence: âFirst, a feeling of tightness develops in the throat so that the victim tries to clear his throat of an imaginary phlegm. The tongue develops a feeling of thickness and speech becomes difficult. The victim next becomes restless and there may be slight, involuntary twitching of the muscles. Small children at this stage will not be still: Some attempt to climb up the wall or the sides of their cot. A series of sneezing spasms is accompanied by a continuous flow of fluid from nose and mouth which may form a copious froth. Occasionally the rate of heartbeat is considerably increased. Convulsions follow, the arms are flailed about and the extremities become quite blue before death occurs.â This progression of symptoms, he says, closely resembles poisoning with strychnine.
Cloudsley-Thompson might be talking about a sting from Androtonus australis, the fearsome North African species said to have venom as toxic as a cobraâsâbut he isnât. Heâs talking about an American scorpion called Centruroides sculpturatus. Most infamous of the forty species found in the southern United States, C. sculpturatus is familiarly known as the bark scorpion, from its habit of hiding beneath loose and fallen pieces of tree bark. During one twenty-year period it accounted for sixty-four deaths in just the state of Arizona.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
The Cloudsley-Thompson scenario and that last statistic, though, may both be unduly alarming. C. sculpturatus is quite common in Arizona, and many people are stung by it without suffering any harrowing effects. One of those victims, Steve Prchal of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, describes the experience this way: âTake a sharp needle and jab it into your hand. Hold a match or a lighter to it for a couplehours. Then add the needles-and-pins sensation you have when a foot falls asleep. Thatâs what a bark scorpion sting feels like.â Evidently the reaction can range anywhere from modest discomfort to horribleawful death, depending upon the body size and general health of the person stung, as well as other obscure factors, including luck. Best to steer clear of scorpion habitat, then, when you feel especially frail or unlucky.
Steve Prchal got his sting during a family camping
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