# Arboreal scorpions



## black_ops (Jan 30, 2004)

By watching my forest scorpions I have noticed that they are excellent climbers, which is something truly suprising to me because I always thought they were terrible climbers.

My question is, are there any species of scorpion which are truly arboreal, ones which spend most, or at least a lot, of their time in trees?


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## ShaunHolder (Jan 30, 2004)

Acually you might want to go to discoverychannel.com and check out some of thier articles on arachnids and scorpions. I remember reading that some scorpions may spend a good portion of thier lives quite high up in trees since thier is a good supply of food for them. Although what scorpion species does this escapes me for them moment. =D


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## Kugellager (Jan 30, 2004)

IMO, based on what I have read and observed, I would say no.  They are not designed very well to live is trees though many species climb quite well.  As most of us know Centruroides spp. are good climbers and can probably be found quite high up from time to time in trees. 

Howver, based on what I have observed with my various species of Centruroides;  They seem to prefer the underside of a horizontal surface to a vertical surface by far. If I tilt pieces of bark in any of my setups to the vertical and leave it there for a few minutes...they will scramble around looking for a horizontal surface...even if the vertical surface is shaded (to see if they were just reacting to the light).  In addition to the above evidence supporting the preference to horizontal surfaces; I have also found them molting only on the underside of horizontal surfaces...being upside down for the molt. 

In general, unlike spiders, they are better designed as ground dwellers than tree dwellers.

John
];')


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## skinheaddave (Jan 30, 2004)

L.australasiae can live quite high up in the trees and are the only species I can think of off the top of my head that I woudl be comfortable calling "arboreal" in the true sense.  That being said, scorpions of the genera Centruroides, Tityus, Lychas, Compsobuthus, Uroplectus, Babycurus, Vaejovis, Paruoctonus and others will take to the foliage at times.  In fact, the first few contain species that are strongly associated with arboreal lifestyles, though they are far from obligate.   

Cheers,
Dave


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## reverendsterlin (Jan 31, 2004)

should be noted that most of a tree is usually horizontal, I would suspect that the verticle 'trunk' would support less time than the  horizontal 'limb'. JMHO
Rev


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