CANNIBALISM: The TV series

There are many scorpions in the world (some might think too many), especially in desert areas such as the Mojave Desert outside Las Vegas. I had the pleasure of discovering why, in collaboration with Phil Brownell, the world's leading scorpion dude (you can read the details here). Of course we used the planet's finest respirometry equipment. In the process we found the best explanation to date of why scorpions eat other scorpions, including their own children.

What happens is this. Scorpions have extremely low metabolic rates - about 25% of a normal insect or other arthropod of the same mass. Thus, for a given trophic energy flow, you'll get about 4x the biomass of scorpions and thus, all things being equal, 4x the number of scorpions compared to, say, insects. This explains the superabundance. What about the cannibalism?

Well, scorpions are predators, and because they're 4x more numerous than they "should" be, they'll also bump into each other about 4x more often than more conventional arthropods will. Hence, cannibalism. Actually there's a lot more to it than that, including the hypothesis that scorpions use their young as a kind of living, self-sustaining energy storage mechanism! If you're a scorpion, eating your children is a good idea. Do not try this at home. For more details see the paper.

So, tonight sees us heading out to Zzyzx to film scorpions in their natural habitat. We're doing a show-and-tell for the inimitable Frank van Breukelen's Desert Survivors series. At last I'll get to try out some of those new UV LED scorpion-finders (scorpions, as you probably know, fluoresce under UV light; they look like intricately carved, living jewels of lime fire). If enough bizarre things happen (as they usually do) we'll post the details.