The scorpion Euscorpius italicus can reach a length of about 5.0 cm and thus represents the biggest Euscorpius-species in Europe. It lives undersmall rocks or stones, on the walls nearby housing estates, inside buildings and on Calcareous grasslands. Specimens in the film were found on the Croatian island Krk under small, flat stones in a sparse stock of trees besides a walkway. Several scorpions could be found quite close to each other. The mating behavior was not observed. The pregnant female burrowed a chamber belowground in the terrarium and appeared on the surface again after birth of its nymphs. Scorpions reproduce via vivipary or ovovivipary. After birth the only slightly sclerotized nymphs climb on the back of their mother. Her maternal instincts are qute well developed. She supports her offspring during the exertions of climbing on her back and defends the juveniles against endangerments. Mother's back offers suitable microclimatic conditions for the nymphs. They obviously absorb nutrients from their mother due to secretions from the cuticle of her backside. The first instars cannot survive without their mother. Scientific experiments of different arachnologists could show that juvenile scorpions before their first molt instinctively climb on anything of the size of a female scorpion. They also accept dried and dead scorpions, but prefer freshly died scorpions and of course like a live female best. Females can accept juveniles of another scorpion species. After their first molt, nymphs usually leave their mother's back. Their sting is functional now and enables them to catch their own prey. The female in the film already before the molting of her nymphs showed a conspicuous behavior. she sometimes was found in a curved posture with some of her nymphs also sitting on her underside. The female was finally found dead after the first molt of her nymphs. The nymphs aggregated a while around her cadaver. Finally they distributed inside the terrarium, but remained aggregated in small groups of about 2-4 individuals. Although they were fed with Drosophila, they also seemed from time to time still to benefit from the cadaver of their mother as food ressource by possibly feeding on dipteran larvae and mites (Astigmata and Gamasida), which were growing on the mother's dead body. This was not directly observed, but the groups of young scorpion nymphs remained not too far away from the female's cadaver. It is therefore assumed that it could have been still interesting for the nymphs somehow. Mites obviously came from the terrarium-soil. Phoretic mites attached to the scorpions from the field were not observed. The strategy of "matriphagy" is known within Arachnida, especially from different spider groups and from a neotropical pseudoscorpion. In these cases, the mother usually dies during her maternal care activities and ends as first bigger food-ressource for her offspring. Such a strategy is not known to me from Euscorpius-species or from other Scorpiones. The here observed case of matriphagy in E. italicus could be an unusual exeption. It's also not clear, in what extent the mother's cadaver could directly offer nutritional supplements to their offspring immediately after or during dying. Additionally it could easily be that the female died due to an infection with pathogens rather than due to a preprogrammed death or due to activities of the juveniles. IMPORTANT The following concerns all my videos. In cases, in which I do not own the rights for the sound, only text, pictures and video sequences are concerned. Here I own -as in most cases- all rights: Pictures, video sequences, text and sound from this Youtube-Channel-side may only be used with special approval by Stefan F. Wirth, and then only, if each copy made contains this copyright text. My permission usually requires payments and even then is given only very rarely.

• published: 29 Aug 2013
• views: 3228