# scorpion body regeneration



## desmond (Mar 10, 2015)

My baby emperor scorpion tail rotted off. The stinger fell off and now it does not have a stinger. It's only a baby now prolly 2-3rd instar... Will it grow the stinger back eventuall?


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## Ripa (Mar 10, 2015)

desmond said:


> My baby emperor scorpion tail rotted off. The stinger fell off and now it does not have a stinger. It's only a baby now prolly 2-3rd instar... Will it grow the stinger back eventuall?


The telson (stinger) and all the metasomal segments (the ones in the "tail") will not normally regenerate, unfortunately. A cruel-ish experiment was published a bit recently about how scorpions that lose metasomal segments are subject to a very long, agonizing demise- the segments heal at the break-point, but consider scorpions actually have their anus located between the telson and most distal metasomal segment (the little membranous gap between the stinger bulb and last tail segment)- odd anatomy, is it? Well, after healing, the scorpions lose the ability to poop and over months upon months, the fecal matter supposedly accumulates in the scorpion's lower half until it finally dies from impaction. This was demonstrated in a few species of South American scorpion that voluntary expressed autotomy (voluntary loss of appendage to escape a predator/ threat) and this was the ultimate result- considering emperors aren't even known for this, I highly doubt they would fair any better.
Now in your case, if it's just the telson thus far, your little guy may still have a chance. How are the other metasomal segments looking? Keep an eye on the other segments. How much of the telson actually rotted off? Did the membranes associated with it close off or does it still look fresh and white?
*IMPORTANT EDIT!- I'm getting reports that AT LEAST the telson would regenerate after molts, although other reports say it won't. Perhaps when those experiments were performed, the scorpions already experienced their postultimate molts. But yours is a fairly young specimen and has a bunch of molts ahead of it. However, apparently regrowth success with legs in scorpions is not the same as that found in spiders, so I can't really say for certain about their telson and metasoma.*
(Keep in mind that I never ran into this problem when I owned scorpions some years ago. My LPS actually knew how to take care of their animals and didn't run into these sorts of ailments very often- shame it's not still around).
*EDIT- http://atshq.org/articles/Regeneration.pdf "In scorpions, compete regeneration of appendages is either rare or non-existent. They have been known to regenerate parts of legs, but in a non-methodical way. For example, if an
immature scorpion lost all of a leg past the femur, it won’t regenerate the complete leg, but it
may regenerate a leg segment, such as the tarsus at the site where the leg was lost."*


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## Galapoheros (Mar 11, 2015)

I've only seen the sharp stinging part, the aculeus grow back sharp after a break, but not as long.  That was some years ago with a P. transvaalicus.

Reactions: Like 2


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