meet alfred the book scorpion (also: house scorpion):
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.
Thursday, 23.04.2009 at 23:31
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? :)
Thursday, 23.04.2009 at 23:31
sorry … i meant: how do you *know he’s a “he”
Friday, 24.04.2009 at 01:17
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. :)
Friday, 01.05.2009 at 23:37
[...] caroline’s comment on the naming of alfred, i decided to call this one junior. reading up on zebra spiders, i found [...]