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For the first time in history, a kind of scorpion was capable of “sneezing” its poison was found in South America.
Scorpion capable of poisoning without physical contact is discovered in Colombia/Photo: Istock
Baptized as Tityus Achilles, the scorpion was identified in the Cundinamarca region of Bogota, Colombia. The discovery of the new scorpion genre was released in an article at the Journal of the Linnean Society.
Before this species, only two were documented with this mechanism worldwide, one in North America and one in Africa.
Poison spraying by a species from South America has surprised scientists. In general, scorpion poison is produced in the tail, more precisely on the “Telson”, where there are two poison -producing glands in order to inject it into its target.
In the case of scorpions that sneeze the poison, physical contact is not necessary. They use this mechanism to scare a possible predator and can escape or attack it with a lethal bite. However, the predator or prey can also defend itself.
Tityus Achilles’s anatomy suggests that the angle for sneezing the poison can be directed to the eyes and nose of whom he wants to attack. However, the method is not as efficient as the bite.
“These toxins need to reach very sensitive fabrics to actually make effect, so that it makes sense, the predator has to be a vertebrate. The toxins would hardly penetrate an invertebrate exoskeleton, ”said Leo Laborieux, a master student at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, to Live Science.
Laborieux tested T. Achilles’s ability to snee in his poison holding specimens with a straw and recording his reactions. 10 young scorpions were tested, which ejected poison 46 times, reaching a maximum distance of 36 centimeters.
Some of the scorpions have launched a small amount of drops of poison to protect themselves from the straw. Already others sneezed poison continuously. Most jets were directed forward, and some back and up.
Most jets were transparent, representing what scientists call pre-vanene, toxic liquid usually released before the poison itself, which in turn has a milky tone.
“The poison itself is usually composed of peptides and proteins with greater molecular weight, and for this reason, much more laborious to produce,” said Laborieux.
There are over 2,000 documented scorpions in the world. In Brazil there are 172 species, as reported by the Butantan Institute in a study by 2022.
