INTRODUCTION...
Welcome to www.scorpion-web.com, an online resource documenting my own personal experience of husbandry with several different species of scorpion. My aim is to record any behaviour I observe while
keeping certain species and to share all information via this website.
I've been keeping scorpions for several years now, starting the hobby with a sub-adult female Pandinus imperator (Emperor or Imperial Scorpion). I caught the 'bug' and a year later I had a female Hadogenes troglodytes. Then an adult female Hadrurus Arizonensis and so forth. So in short, I caught the bug bad!
My fascination with these efficient little predators began as a youngster and as time passed on I developed a great interest in aquiring a 'pet' scorpion. They are the world's oldest known arachnids and are extremely apt predators, able to catch a variety of prey through use of their pincers, sting and powerful mouthparts (chelicerae). They have highy sensitive hairs (setae) situated all over their structure and comb like "pectines" ventrally, which they use to sense the slightest ground vibration or air movement.
They have adapted to live in a variety of different habitats; of the small number of species I keep there is a huge contrast in keeping conditions. For instance Hadrurus arizonensis requires a bone dry desert setting where as Pandinus imperator needs a tropical type setting with exceptionally high humidity for optimum conditions.
To hugely simplfy my view of the hobby, I believe in three aspects in terms of keeping scorpions (or any other venomous exotic pet)...
Knowledge - It is your duty to learn as much as you can about the animal you keep. Knowledge is power, as they say.
Care - Knowledge leads naturally to the second aspect of caring properly for the animal. Just because they don't yelp like a dog and can go for longs periods of time without food, it doesn't mean you should neglect the scorpion. With keeping any animal, no matter how basic the life form, comes responsibility.
Respect - A very important aspect. Scorpions are venomous. Ofcourse some are far more dangerous than others. However respect must be shown at all times with any species regardless of the recorded potency of their venom.
Safety... as a rule of thumb I keep all my scorpion enclosures very basic with essentially substrate, a water dish (if required) and a hide. On opening an enclosure I always make sure I know where the scorpion is. I never handle my scorpions, except with large neoprene tipped hobby tweezers. This only occurs if I need to do extensive cage maintainence and therefore have to quarantine the scorpion to carry out the maintainence safely and thoroughly. This process is carried out within the enclosure by tailing the scorpion (with large tweezers) into a smaller container. Another plausable technique with a more dangerous species is to carry out this same procedure within a bath tub (plugged ofcourse!). Also worth nothing is that I never overturn a hide with my bare hands, this is done also with the tweezers, or another tool.
In closing, I hope that you find this site useful in some respect or another. Please feel free to get in touch or particpate on the forum.
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