thinkoholic.com - a blog by markus nolf
[posted: Friday, 2009-04-17] [category: nature, photo] [tags: , ]

meet alfred the book scorpion (also: house scorpion):

book scorpion (chelifer cancroides)
book scorpion (chelifer cancroides)

i noticed this little guy crawl up from behind a shelf in my room.
pseudoscorpions (they resemble scorpions, but lack the long abdomen and stinger of “real” scorpions) usually hunt for small insects like psocoptera (booklice, barklice), so i think he’ll be allowed to stay in my room.

i named him alfred, after batman’s butler.

over at somethingcrawlinginmyhair.com, there’s an article about book scorpions and the challenge of identification by tim eisele.

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    4 comments:

    1. Caro :) says:

      Hahahah. Just reading the URL “somethingcrawlinginmyhair.com” made my skin crawl. :)

      Also: how do you he’s a “he”? Maybe it should be called … Frieda? :)

    2. Caro :) says:

      sorry … i meant: how do you *know he’s a “he”

    3. markus says:

      hehe, you’re right.
      gender identification is probably not as hard as exact species ID, so i think i’ll try to get to a microscope next time i come across him/her. :)

    4. male zebra spider | thinkoholic.com says:

      [...] caroline’s comment on the naming of alfred, i decided to call this one junior. reading up on zebra spiders, i found [...]

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