I'm not convinced of this. I think they respond and require lighting cues in the wild.
yeah, they avoid it.
Yes, but don’t they use lighting cues in the wild to help navigate their daily requirements to live; i.e. food and water availability, sheltering depth, the approach of mating season, and since we provide everything for them in captivity, their need to rely on the big old sun (or just plain old photons in general) thus becomes a non-issue.
Oh, absolutely. But as far as needing light to physiologically survive I don't think so. My A. chalcodes flips when I turn my overhead light on for too long.
What made me type my response was something scientific I found a few years ago. A research group using scorpion DNA found a particular species had DNA that coded for a protein that is involved clock/circadian rhythm in other animals (including us). These clock genes are HIGHLY conserved across species. SO, I suggest if scorps have them (well one species does) than it's likely Ts do as well, and thus light is necessary for them.
Wow, that’s pretty fascinating! I guess 99.9% of life on Earth really does depend on the sun.
There’s no doubt they respond to light cues in the wild, there’s a reason you don’t see them hanging out of the burrow entrance in broad daylight unless they’re in the already dim rainforest floor. They probably don’t really need light in captivity though seeing as they don’t need to know when they need to hide away to avoid birds and other diurnal predators
Well ya did say you weren’t convinced about them not having any lighting requirements
I'm actually completely with @viper69 on this one. A circadian rhythm has nothing whatsoever to do with hiding from predators. In mammals we know that the circadian rhym is structured by a light cycle and without it their health will decline, no matter if they are nocturnal or diurnal. Ask all the factory farmers that provide artificial daily cycles for their stock. We don't know really what effects that cycle has on invertebrates. We know they can survive without light and they don't necessarily depend on it - after all, they are very hardy - but there may still be effects that are to small to see in our limited captive populations, the first thing coming to mind is always the immune system, but also neurological weaknesses. Mind you, I'm just speculating here, but since we don't really know I wouldn't discard the notion that even inverts thrive better (even if only a few percent) with a daily cycle.
True, but many of those animals have no eyes, or reduced eyes with less sensitivity to light if at all, more so than Ts I suspect.
And how well do a ts eyes work....from our perspective, id say barely. Their eyes suck...lol