Subject: Scorpion with brood consumes wolf spider
Location: Toledo District , Belize
August 17, 2014 8:32 pm
After looking at your scorpion photos, I thought you might be interested in this image.
Signature: Tanya
Dear Tanya,
You are our new hero. These Food Chain images are awesome, but we have some questions. Please tell us more about this Scorpion that appears to have been feeding indoors. Was it living inside your home? Also, the lighting is very different on the two images, with the redder image having more critical focus. Why are the lighting conditions different? We found a very similar looking Scorpion on The Flying Kiwi, but it is listed as unidentified. Since the head of the spider has already been devoured, we didn’t think we would be able to identify your Wolf Spider, but we found an image on Scott Leslie’s site that looks very similar to the Wolf Spider in your images. Alas, it is not identified beyond the family. We love that you have supplied images to our site that document the maternal behavior of Scorpions.
Well, it’s not often I’m a hero. Encouraging words indeed. The lighting is different because the brighter photo was taken with flash and the other without. She was on the ceiling of a work building which is enclosed on the upper level but only has half walls on the lower level where she was settled. I have a total of ten photos, with and without flash, from a couple different angles; the later ones were taken about 80 minutes after the first ones; by that time there was very little left of the spider. The scorpion was not at all disturbed by the photo sessions. If you’d like me to send some more photos, I’ll gladly do that.
We would love to see any images before the ones you sent that show the Wolf Spider better, or any images you have with the young Scorpions feeding with mama Scorpion. Thanks for the explanation regarding color. It is pretty much what we expected.