Raising a giant

[Nanotrev]

You might notice the repeat of a theme in this post. Growth. It would seem reasonable to assume that very little goes into how big a scorpion gets. One can look at other arthropods such as a roach and see what I mean. While it may not be needed the main purpose of me posting this here was to get advice from people who have a lot more experience with scorpions

I've decided to see for myself how large an Emperor scorpion can get and whether or not their environmental origin makes a difference in how large of a size the offspring may obtain. I'd like to know what kind of conditions would make the largest scorpion. Is it possible more than food, heat and moisture could effect invertebrates?

I'm beginning with a large gravid female Emperor scorpion that is close to six inches in length. It is the slings, her young, that I wish to grow in mammoth proportion compared to their mother after they're born.

I mist every other day with the digital hydrometer having just gone out (buying another after work tomorrow). One burrow is at room temperature and the other at the opposite end of the 29gallon is at a minumum of 85F at night with things more often than not staying around that range though it can linger towards 90F. 250 crickets from Fluker Farms are coming in tomorrow through an overnight shipment.

They will be on a diet consisting of lettuce, clementines, peices of apples, and the gel peices Fluker Farms sells which contains calcium in it for water. I have yet to find out since the female refuses food at the moment but I'll attempt to dust the crickets with a vitamin-mineral powder twice a week as well if she eats them as such. I hope to bypass any nutritional deficiencies this way.

Currently, she has ZooMed's Eco-Earth to burrow in with about four inches in the back of the terrarium to dig tunnels. There is a small water dish, live plants, and realistic settings incorporated into the making of the terrarium along with a sloped design to give the inhabitants more room. If anyone has literature they could share, it would be very helpful towards my goal.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. What I'm still wondering is...

If a longer time between birth and maturity makes for a larger scorpion or just the opposite?

What, if anything has an effect on the development of chitin?

What are the most crucial things in a scorpion's diet that effect its growth and development and are there certain elements I could provide to promote the development of a larger scorpion?

The largest Emperor scorpions come from the forest, possibly being because of either over-collection on the savanna (less time to grow) or better conditions in the forests, or both. If there are other factors in the rain forests besides humidity and warmth, what would they be?

It seems so rare to see Emperor scorpions at eight inches or more, and I'd certainly like to see mine get past six inches long and obtain a considerable weight without being seen as overfed or gravid. Perhaps with some information people can scrape up we could learn a little more in regards of what effects how large our pets get and if we're unwittingly taking less that superb care of them. I've been looking into this quite a bit but haven't been able to find much with the exception of someone here mentioning that it could be common to have something missing from their diet that we don't know they need. Some insight on where and how they live besides under a rotting log in a rainforest would be helpful if anyone knows anything more in-depth than is mentioned here such as what they eat in the wild, what their prey must eat, and etc.


EDIT:

It's the slings I'm trying to get to grow to a gargantuan size, not their mother.

 

[dantediss]

theres only 2 things to my knowledge that truly affect size... 1. overabundance of food 2. higher concentrations of oxygen. if you can provide those shell become a monster, but emps are picky eaters

 

[Galapoheros]

It's pretty weird to us humans, scorpions and other inverts show growth with molts. Your scorp won't grow anymore in length, except from being distended from eating and/or drinking a lot, or if it has another molt to go. But that's not true exo-skeleton growth, it's more like being fat the night after Thanksgiving. I've wondered about the questions you asked. Personally, I think most of it, 90% of it or more, is genetic. I think the "forest" six+ inchers are genetically that size. I don't think it has to do with oxygen availability, I think it has to do with survival, evolving (genetically) bigger to deal with conditions there in the rain forest, minus the oxygen factor. Nobody knows right now, and if the "oxygen" theory does apply, maybe it applies to some species and not others. Are there giant humans there and other species in the rain forest because of oxygen availability(?), I don't think that's the case, I think it's genetics evolving with available resources, I definitely could be wrong though, just my opinion. I have babies from a 6 inch female waiting to see if most hit around 6 inches, I'm curious about it too.

 

[Nanotrev]

It's pretty weird to us humans, scorpions and other inverts show growth with molts. Your scorp won't grow anymore in length, except from being distended from eating and/or drinking a lot, or if it has another molt to go. But that's not true exo-skeleton growth, it's more like being fat the night after Thanksgiving. I've wondered about the questions you asked. Personally, I think most of it, 90% of it or more, is genetic. I think the "forest" six+ inchers are genetically that size. I don't think it has to do with oxygen availability, I think it has to do with survival, evolving (genetically) bigger to deal with conditions there in the rain forest, minus the oxygen factor. Nobody knows right now, and if the "oxygen" theory does apply, maybe it applies to some species and not others. Are there giant humans there and other species in the rain forest because of oxygen availability(?), I don't think that's the case, I think it's genetics evolving with available resources, I definitely could be wrong though, just my opinion. I have babies from a 6 inch female waiting to see if most hit around 6 inches, I'm curious about it too.

It's the young of the gravid scorpion I want to try and promote phenomenal growth in. I've seen pictures of massive specimens of H. swammerdami and P. imperator. My goal is to raise a beast of a scorpion that beats both of those records, even if it means I have to breed them to that size though I'm starting out with the smallest steps I need to take first that will ultimately become the largest advancments in my progress once I get them down.

 

[CodeWilster]

My 2 cents; simply feed them a large variety of healthy foods frequently and keep their habitat/climate conditions optimum as if they were in the wild...genetics will be the limiting factor but at least that way they can theoretically reach their maximum potential-when all of the other factors remain ideal. You never know, maybe they all have the [genetic] potential to hit the sizes of the jungle monsters.

If it is entirely genetics, that would call for some selective breeding [for size] and a lot of patience!

I have some of the "jungle giants" (came from Kenthebugguy.com) here's a pic:

Definitely some impressive scorps!

 

[Nanotrev]

I wonder if it's possible for Ken to hand pick one for a customer based on large size. I'd buy a large male later on if I had the reassurance it would in fact be around the eight inch range. First I guess I'll have to wait and see what the slings inside the female I have turn out to be like as adults which could take years.

After that, if there are indeed large males and females, I may choose to inbreed them. It's not often I good idea I know, but I'll pick out the flaws in the inbred offspring the best that I can if there are any. If there are large individuals I'd like to strengthen those same genetics in case any might be reccesive genes that dictate how large the scorpion gets.

 

[CodeWilster]

Might want to consider limiting the feeder crickets/roaches' diets to dark leafy greens (organic kale, spinach) and super high-protein dog food, too.

Probably would be most effective (*if* this is a factor at all in the first place) to raise the crickets from subadults to adults on this menu, or even from earlier stages.

I would imagine that the "gut loading" just prior to feeding does next to nothing. It is probably the nutrients that the cricket (as a primary consumer) ingests then digests/metabolizes/redistributes to build its own exoskeleton, fuel its cells/nourish its body that would be most utilized by the scorpion (secondary consumer) as it consumes the entire cricket, rather than chunks of dog food and leaves sitting in the crickets' bellies.

I believe Ken would be willing to pick out specimens for you to the best of his ability. He is a great dealer for sure.

Also, there are a lot of people that consistently get upset about inbreeding due to the bias we as humans have toward that word/practice (since we know it is usually harmful to most mammals). However, I do not believe there is any concrete evidence that inbreeding is detrimental to most arthropods. After all, I believe most roaches in the hobby came from the same source and by now are probably all related to some degree. Just a thought.

 

[Nanotrev]

The only thing I wonder about dog food is how nutritious it is. I suppose I could feed the crickets a selection of food in small plastic dishes like I usually do.

Does anyone know what scorpions require in their diet? I assume they need a small amount of calcium, due to reading up on hermit crabs a while back. The marine variety required a small amount of calcium to be added to the water for some reason or another. Perhaps with scorpions it may be the same. Either way I can only see it benefiting a scorpion if it does anything for them at all so one might as well try it.

About to head to bed, though any more suggestions I could read tomorrow morning, let alone more information on scorpions, their growth, habitat and habits in the wild, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[kevin88]

Dog would is high in protein and good. I have 2 giants from Ken as well. I picked them up at a show from him. They were a little higher in price... but well worth the size....they are huge! I suggest emailing him.

Kevin

 

[Nanotrev]

I just sent an e-mail to him not too long ago, hopefully I can get one of the largest individuals he has and either buy two to breed and begin trying to work with genetics I know will produce large offspring once the slings mature or roll the dice and order a male scorpion from him and see what I can do with the female I have now. She's gravid so it may be a while before I order from Ken although the lure of a giant P. imperator is hard to resist indeed. I might just buy one simply because I enjoy having them around to watch. It's the main reason I got into scorpions anyways, aside from finding them facinating in how they go about their lives etc.

Something that just came to mind as I'm just about to head off to sleep was that I read information in regards to growth in reptiles. If you don't feed them enough at a young age it stunts their growth, and you end up with a smaller but mature version of what that animal could have been if it had been fed properly. Perhaps the P. imperator population that lives in the forests has larger overall size because when they're young they have a wider range of small insect species to consume at a young age?

 

[rd_07]

My 2 cents; simply feed them a large variety of healthy foods frequently and keep their habitat/climate conditions optimum as if they were in the wild...genetics will be the limiting factor but at least that way they can theoretically reach their maximum potential-when all of the other factors remain ideal. You never know, maybe they all have the [genetic] potential to hit the sizes of the jungle monsters.

If it is entirely genetics, that would call for some selective breeding [for size] and a lot of patience!

I have some of the "jungle giants" (came from Kenthebugguy.com) here's a pic:

Definitely some impressive scorps!

wow if it really is i'd be patient for the broods
i got pair of i think 7inches and the other bigger female died unfortunately (never even got a good photo my camera sucks atm)
i'll take a good measurement with other female


diets i'm giving them is
jumbo black crickets
and gut loaded dubias

for the growth rate i cant say much that will help since the brood that i had before was sold at 2-3instars

and that was few years back them cant remember much coz i had so many brood of heterometrus sp. and growth rate is almost the same

 

[pandinus]

EDIT- never got to page two, so didnt see some of the discussion. some of this info may be redundant, sorry if it is.

It would seem reasonable to assume that very little goes into how big a scorpion gets.

there is actually tons that goes into the size of a scorpion, and growing a monster is nowhere near simple or easy, or else it would be much more common. some quick background information:
The largest limiting factor of an arthropod's size (from a standpoint of the species, not the individual) apart from genetics is oxygen and mass. prehistoric arthropods flourished in the high oxygen atmosphere of their time and were able to grow to massive sizes. the oxygen content of today is much lower and the primitive lungs of the scorpion do not allow for optimum gas exchange, and so their bodies are limited to the size they can grow such that they can absorb enough oxygen to circulate through their bodies. Species that might grow too large run the risk of suffocating under their own mass.
This is not something apparent in the individual but in population trends, a species reaches its maximum size because it is the size of the individuals that are as large as they can comfortably be and still reproduce and populate. specimens that grow to be too large become at a disadantage and are unable to pass on their genetics to the population's gene pool and future generations. With arthropods the golden balance seems to be being large enough to overpower your target prey, but small enough to not be crushed under your own weight or suffocate from lack of oxygen. in many cases if size is not necessary or provides a distinct advantage in that population, then the population will generally only grow to or slightly above its needed requirement because there is no need to have the extra mass to support if you dont have use for it.
now then, Emperor scorpions are the largest scorpions on earth, Pandinus imperator is found in a substantial range of central africa, but in scattered ppulations throughout its range. in some of these populations the emperors live in densely vegetated rainforests in burrows of their own construction. There is abundant food and a slightly elevated concentration of oxygen in these populations. There are also populations that are found in more scrub-like and savanah regions as well as in biotopes in between these two extremes. in the savanah populations, the emperors are most commonly found living inside of massive termite mounds where there is an abundant food supply, as well as moisture and protection from predators and the elements. It is important to keep in mind that these are not different species or subspecies, they are the same species, but they are different populations, just the way that for example an american and a russian person are both humans, but they are from different populations. These populations of scorpions are sort of like their own little micronations, they are separate from eachother and some dont really ever come into contact since some are in deep forests, and others in plains and fileds the two would never really meet.
as a result the genetics of the two pouplations will be separate from eachother, still the same species but entirely different trends. In a population where the inhabitants live off of mostly termites and live in the tight confines of their massive mounds, with less access to drinking water and lower oxygen levels, these emperors dont have the need or the praticality to achieve the larger sizes of those in populations where they live in self dug burrows with abundant larger prey and lots of moisture and higher oxygen levels. For these larger scorpions there wont necessarily be a large number of easy prey like termites waiting around the corner, so they must be larger in order to overpower larger prey. over time this becomes ingrained in the genetics of the population. if the larger scorpions are the most successful they will reproduce more than smaller ones, and eventually most of the offspring will
belong to larger parents, and so they have the genetic capability to grow to a larger size if they can get enough food etc to do so. In the savanah populations size is still important to defend against predators and overpower the other inhabitants of the termite mounds, but being too large in these smaller areas could affect a scorpion's mobility and thereby reduce its success at feeding, giving it less energy to mate, and so selection would favor a smaller scorpion.
If these pressures remained over thousands of years with the different populations moving in opposite directions of eachother, they could eventually and over a very very long period of time evolve to the point of being two different species with adaptations to suite the needs of their surroundings, but that is another matter altogether.
Unfortunately most of the areas where the larger and highly coveted rainforest populations of emperors reside are either very isolated and trecherous or war torn and even more dangerous. as a result the majority of emperors in the hobby come from savanah populations, and so for generation after generation have not had the pressure to grow massive, and so they havent.
Therefore while you can maximize a scorpion's growth by giving it a healthy and well rounded diet etc, if its parents' genetics favored a certain size, and their parents' favored a cretain size so on and so on and so on, you can grow it up to its maximum potential, but it probably wont get to monster proportions if it doesnt have it in its lineage. all you can do to maximize the current generation you have is the things you have outlined, but if you are truly interested in breeding true monsters youll have to work at it.
Feed all your offspring well and raise them to adulthood, select the largest ones you can find and breed them together, then raise those offspring up and mate the largest two out of that litter, try to find other large specimens that arent related to the ones you have and breed them to increase the diversity and cut down on inbreeding as much as possible, although you can get away with a lot more inbreeding in arthropods than you can in vertebrates, diversifying is never a bad idea. and basically for generations you will need to raise them up and pick the largest ones you can find to mate together and over the span of many generations you may start to observe a trend that favors larger sized scorpions. there is much more involved in this, but i'll leave it up to you to research that on your own. as I'm sure you already know this is called selective breeding for a specific trait, and it is the chief reason for the wide diversity of domesticated animals like dogs and cats, as well as controlled color morphs in captive animals like ball pythons leopard geckos, etc. good luck, hope this helps.


John

 

[Alejandro45]

this will be a very interesting project...

i am horrible with genetics but i can recommend talking to dog breeders and mabe go to your near by collage or university and get some in depht information about selective breeding.

i really would like to see these outcomes :clap:

 

[Galapoheros]

Oh, ha, sorry, I read the title and skimmed over your post too fast, thought you were trying to make your adult grow. I'm bad about not thoroughly reading sometimes. Not through with John's post yet lol!, a lot of info, that was cool and appreciate the time. Well good luck with the giants! I'm doing the same right now but I wasn't able to start with "huge" giants, ...but they are 6 inchers. The only thing that would bother me about your female is that, as far as genetics go, you don't know how big the male was she mated with if she is gravid. Or maybe you don't care so much, are you more interested in experimenting with size and diet?, or do you just like the idea of looking at giant scorpions?, like me . The biggest I've seen was 7" but somebody claimed it before I could, pretty impressive. Let me know if you want to see how I'm keeping babies I'm hoping turn out large like their mom and I'll take a pic. I raised a couple of babies a few years ago, they both matured between 2 and 3 years

 

[Nanotrev]

I more or less assumed most people would think what you'd quoted though suspicions led me to beleive there was more to it that there seemed to be.

How would I get more oxygen into their tanks? The gravid female's enclosure is planted with three small pothos. I'll likely buy more for the enclosure sometime until the plants provide sufficient ground cover for the back of the terrarium.

Any other ideas for food? So far my plan is to see how large I can grow the female's young in addition to aquiring a pair of the largest scorpions that Ken The Bug Guy has. It seems I'd have the most luck with the second option and then just keep adding in new gene pools from other large specimens here and there.

 

[pandinus]

there really isnt going to be a way to boost the oxygen levels in your tank to any significant level short of rigging up some sprt of system where you had an Oxygen tank running into your enclosure, and then somehow finding a way to keep the oxygen from escaping while still allowing proper gass exchange and ventilation. Even with this, i'm not sure how much you would have to raise the levels in order to achieve the results you want. basically if you want this youll just have to spend a lot of time working at it, because it wont be coming easy.




John

 

[Alejandro45]

there really isnt going to be a way to boost the oxygen levels in your tank to any significant level short of rigging up some sprt of system where you had an Oxygen tank running into your enclosure, and then somehow finding a way to keep the oxygen from escaping while still allowing proper gass exchange and ventilation. Even with this, i'm not sure how much you would have to raise the levels in order to achieve the results you want. basically if you want this youll just have to spend a lot of time working at it, because it wont be coming easy.




John

with this post in mind....

I am a EMT and from what i have learned about oxygen therapy is that with prolonged amounts of O2 exposure it will be detrimental to the health of the person due to adaption of hight O2 amounts a persons vitals will drop just a bit when removed..."imagine what would happen to a scorpion" ..now I can recommend dropping the Oxygen amounts in small increments of a week or so

And there is the dehydration problem aswell. the Medical and non medical grade O2 will dehydrate a adult rather quickly "the scorpion will turn into a rasin"... But there is a way around this it is called humidified O2...basically its just O2 passing thru a chamber of water..its makes a huge difference.

I hope this helps and dont let my 2 cents stop you.

if I had any experiance with breeding and genetics I would have made the pede from king kong

 

[Nanotrev]

Indeed, I realize that though I might try to improve it just a little by planting more pothos and other terrarium plants in the enclosure because even if it doesn't raise the oxygen levels except by a slight amount the plants will be a great method of keeping humidity up.

Also, about Alejandro45's post, my mother is a respitory therapist. High oxygen levels from an O2 tank can be toxic (I'm betting you already know this) if you breath it for too long because our bodies are adapted for an atmosphere that consists of a ratio where nitrogen makes up most of what we breathe, although I didn't know about the dehydrating effects of oxygen. Quite surprising to me.

What I have so far, is to raise the crickets from sub-adults using nutritional foods to fuel that growth and put it forth throughout their bodies and in their digestive tracts, thus making them very healthy feeders.

I thought I'd mention this since moist burrows were said to be beneficial (I know P. imperator comes from generally humid environments to begin with though I have no idea just how humid they are in the wild compared to captivity so I see the following behavior displayed by the female and the cage setup as a good thing) The female has chosen to dig another burrow that measures almost a foot in total length as it curves through the enclosure. She picked her chamber to be on the screen at the bottom of the cage just above the gravel that the water drains into. I imagine it must be very humid and I'd like to repeat this setup with the young when they reach a size to require their own enclosures as it would provide them with the moist burrows that were mentioned earlier by John.

 

[Alejandro45]

Indeed, I realize that though I might try to improve it just a little by planting more pothos and other terrarium plants in the enclosure because even if it doesn't raise the oxygen levels except by a slight amount the plants will be a great method of keeping humidity up.

Also, about Alejandro45's post, my mother is a respitory therapist. High oxygen levels from an O2 tank can be toxic (I'm betting you already know this) if you breath it for too long because our bodies are adapted for an atmosphere that consists of a ratio where nitrogen makes up most of what we breathe, although I didn't know about the dehydrating effects of oxygen. Quite surprising to me.

Great!! and yes O2 tanks are dryer than the desert and will suck the water right out of you..but nothing like a IV and some humidified O2 to keep your vitals stable

now the more humid the air is the better the oxygen is absorbed buy us..."Just imagine a asthma respirator" in our ventricles and avioli we need water to allow proper gas exchange.

I did some google searching and came to find that tropical grasses have a high O2 output

but we should not fret so much on O2 absorption if anything we need a biologist input:wall:

 

[Nanotrev]

Yeah, a biologist's input would be rather nice. The only thing I see wrong with introducing tropical grasses to the tank would be their lack of flexiblity meaning the scorpion would always have to try and plow through them versus crawling under and on top of the winding tendrils of the pothos when it grows to be a more desireable length. I may have to buy a ceramic heat emitter. I'm noticing a noticable dropping in the pothos right now, presumably because of the lack of a day and night cycle. Perhaps the red light disturbs this. (I watched a documentry which indicated that plants need sleep as well, though further research is needed) As I mentioned before, is there anything missing in a scorpion's captive diet that wild insects would be rich in? I know I've read somewhere that there was indeed some sort of substance that reptiles benefited from that was found in wild insects and thought the same could be said for scorpions.