A Scorpion Apart
While this tailless whip scorpion may look like a creature from a nightmare, it’s a harmless critter. Contrary to the implication of its common name, it can’t whip or sting and none of its many pointy parts contains venom. This species, like scorpions, is a member of the Arachnid class, but it’s only a distant relative of true scorpions.
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DownloadA Scorpion Apart
While this tailless whip scorpion may look like a creature from a nightmare, it’s a harmless critter. Contrary to the implication of its common name, it can’t whip or sting and none of its many pointy parts contains venom. This species, like scorpions, is a member of the Arachnid class, but it’s only a distant relative of true scorpions.
What am I looking at?
This is a dorsal view of a tailless whip scorpion (a member of the order Amblypygi). You can see its head, which is fused with its thorax to form a cephalothorax (1); its specialized sensory front legs (2); its walking legs (3) and claw-like pedipalps (4); and its mouthparts – known as chelicera (5).
Click on the right arrow to see its entire body.
Biology in the background
The tailless whip scorpion, also called a whip spider, is neither a scorpion nor a spider but a member of its own order within the Arachnid class. They are not venomous like scorpions and most spiders, and they do not produce silk like spiders. They have eight legs, but their front pair is adapted to sensing, functioning in a similar way to insects’ antennae; for this reason, the word “antenniform” is used to describe such appendages.
Tailless whip scorpions have poor vision, but that doesn’t matter much because they’re nocturnal creatures. They use their spindly forelegs, which are several times longer than their body and covered with mechano- and chemical sensors, to feel and taste the environment around them. They move slowly, methodically probing their surroundings. They are, however, capable of sudden, lightning-fast movement – a behavior sometimes called “teleporting.” When one of their antenniform appendages contacts a suitable prey, they need only a split second to close the distance and grab the prey with their barbed pedipalps. Like other predatory arachnids, they masticate their prey with their pincer-like chelicerae.
They can grow up to 16 centimeters long (over 6 inches).
Technique
This image was created using macrophotography.
Igor Siwanowicz, HHMI's Janelia Research Campus