Charles Jones, age 11, of Tulsa, Okla, for his question:
How does the scorpion survive?
The scorpion is not an attractive fellow. Nevertheless, he has a place in the scheme of nature. When it comes to survival, he is a very successful animal. His family tree dates back more than 400 million years. A scorpion was one of the first animals to leave the ancient seas and make his home on the dry land. And the scorpion family has changed very little through the ages.
Today there are between 400 and 500 varieties of scorpion. They range from half an inch to eight inches in length. Apart from size they all look alike. Each is a long, thin fellow, hooped over like a quotation mark. The body looks like a small lobster. It has eight walking legs and a pair of mean pincers carried in front. The most remarkable feature is the tail. It is longer than the body, held up and arched over the back. The tail ends in a formidable stinger shaped like a rose bush thorn.
An average sized scorpion can sting as badly as a bee. But a large, healthy scorpion of the tropics can sting badly enough to kill a frail and sick human being. The sting of most scorpions can kill a bird, a mouse or a frog. Any scorpion can sting a spider or insect to death.
Scorpions food on spiders and millipedes. The big fellows may even eat mice, frogs and large insects. The prey is grabbed with the pincers. Then it is stung. The food is then mashed and injected with juices to soften it. It becomes liquid and the scorpion sucks it into his stomach. When a scorpion has eaten an insect, only the dry shell is left.
Scorpion food is plentiful and easy to catch. The scorpion can survive even when food is scarce. For he can live a whole year without eating. True, he has enemies. In the tropics he may be attacked by hordes of ants. Baboons consider him a delicacy ‑ after removing his tail. Large lizards eat him and so do chickens. Once in a while he becomes the victim of the black widow spider.
Mrs. Scorpion allows for a few casualties, for she produces a huge brood of youngsters. The babies are born small copies of their parents. They grow by molting. For the first few days they climb onto Mama's back and sides, almost covering her. She does not feed them, however. After the first molt they drop to the ground and go off on their own.
A grown scorpion leads a lonely life. When he meets a relative, he fights. One kills the other by brute force. The victor devours the vanquished. The scorpion is a cannibal. Mrs. Scorpion may take a fancy to her husband and eat him. In spite of this and other unattractive qualities, the scorpion survives very successfully. His role in nature is to keep down the insect population and make sure the spiders stay alert.
You might want to class the scorpion as an insect. In fact he does belong to Arthropoda, the same phylum to which the insects belong. Their class is Insecta. The scorpion belongs to, the class Arachnida which makes him cousin to the spiders. He has a special order, Scorpionida, all to himself.