Dangerous Details!

[best appreciated at full size against black]

The other day I posted a picture of a scorpion that I found under a log on our hillside, but it wasn't the only image I took! I thought it would be interesting to show closeups of different parts and explain what each one is!

Upper Left: This is a face only a mother could love, and looks like a Predator's mouth to me! That bump on its head are two eyes, and there are two more eyes above its mouth to the left and right! The mouth is called a chelicera and has little finger-like appendages to pull food in and chew it up!

Upper Right: The end of a scorpion's tail is a modified segment called a "telson", which contains the venom gland.

Lower Left: This is one of a scorpion's two claws (chelae), also called pincers. They serve many different purposes, from defense to mating, and some scorpions like this one, prefer to kill their prey by using their pincers.

Lower Right: This is an overall view of the gentle Northwest Forest Scorpion.

If you would like to see a detailed image of scorpion anatomy, you can find one here: Scorpion Anatomy
If you would like more information about scorpions, Wiki has a great page here:: Wiki: Scorpion

This image was taken in April, 2012.