New Scorpion With Sting Like ‘Getting Pricked by a Cactus’ Discovered in California Desert

A two-inch scorpion was recently discovered, and while it is still venomous, there were reportedly no signs that it was fatal. What experts couldn't believe was where it was found because it was reportedly an unlikely spot.

New Species of Scorpion From California Desert

Researchers have found a new type of scorpion in the California desert that is poisonous. It was later named "Tulare Basin scorpion," the novel species discovered spanning hundreds of miles over tough desert northwest of Los Angeles.

The 2.1-inch-long scorpion was first seen among industrial roadside debris. It has since withstood tough, toxic conditions associated with chemically intensive agriculture and petroleum exploitation in the San Joaquin Desert of central California.

The new scorpion is not particularly deadly despite its adaptability to these desert wastes, according to Lauren Esposito, an arachnid researcher who examined it. Its sting felt like "getting pricked by a cactus" and, at worst, like a bee sting. Additionally, its venom reportedly has little effect on humans.

What the expert couldn't believe instead was the location it was found because "they were in a very unusual location."

"I was quite excited to collect them as they were some of the first new species I had found," evolutionary biology student Prakrit Jain at UC Berkeley told local news site SFGATE.

Jain received the information from a fellow iNaturalist user, Brian Hind, a novice reptile hunter perplexed by the creature's peculiar claws.

Together with Harper Forbes, a fellow young citizen scientist, and Lauran Esposito, an assistant curator at the California Academy of Sciences, Jain found additional Tulare Basin scorpion specimens.

Equipped with black lights, the group traversed the rugged desert landscape between Kern County and Fresno in search of additional examples of the novel species.

Tulare Basin Scorpion

The scorpion, now officially known as Paruroctonus Tulare, had adapted to extremely particular mesic, or semi-moist, areas of the California desert.

Male and female scorpions have different-shaped "heavily scalloped pincers," their orange-yellow bodies seem to tan in the desert heat.

"Individuals from both the southeastern and southwestern localities are generally darker and more orange,'" per Jain, Esposito, and their co-authors in a newly published study.

Its coloring was quite different, going from tans and lighter yellows to browns and oranges that were darker. Despite their apparent distinctions, the eight-legged, striped, and smooth-bodied scorpions differ in "fewer than four single nucleotide polymorphisms."

There are several current dangers to the scorpion's survival. Humans cause the majority of them. Researchers believe that one of the human activities that is currently endangering scorpions is cattle grazing, as it has introduced non-native plants that are suffocating native herb species that are essential to the survival of younger Tulare Basin scorpions.

To support the species, the team contends that it should be granted "endangered or critically endangered species status," at the very least at the state level. This will entail helping the native plants as well.

The preservation of alkali-sink plant communities through the protection of the remaining high-quality habitat, control of invasive species, limitation of cattle grazing, restoration of abandoned land, and battling the causes and effects of climate change is the most significant move towards ensuring the future of the Tulare Basin scorpion, according to the researchers.

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