Pugnacious Burrowing Scorpion (Opistopthalmus Pugnax)
Possible etymology:’Opistopthalmus’ – a combination of two base words: Opisto from opistho from opisthen meaning behind or rear and opthalmus from opthalmo meaning eye.’Pugnax’ – Derived from pugnō (“I fight, combat”) + -āx (“inclined to”).Looking at the morphological position of the eyes of this burrowing scorpion group in relation to it’s Cephalothorax, are situated further back in comparison to the the relative eye postion of other scorpion genera.
Their eyes are also refered to as ‘anteriorely skewed’ which would refer to above or top.
So we have a genus referring to the relative ‘rear’ positioning of the median eyes and a species referring to their inclination to want to ‘fight’ or apparent aggressiveness.
The genus Opistopthalmus are burrowing scorpions, meaning that they dig deep elaborate burrows in which they spend most of their time.
They are typically heavy built scorpions with large pincers/claws (chelae) and a relatively small tail (metasoma) with the venom bulb (telson) attached at the end of the tail and interestingly the anus between the tail and venom bulb.
They will overpower their prey item with these large pincers and start devouring it with its mouth parts (chelicerae) which looks pretty much like little ‘mini’ pincers that help break the prey item into manageable small ‘bite sized’ pieces of food.
This particular species tend to have a ‘muddy’ look with their pincers almost always covered in soil.
Their sting can be painful but are not of medical concern and being burrowing scorpions, human scorpion conflict hardly ever occurs, accounting for hardly any stings.
During mating season, males will go about searching for females. Once found, they will do a mating dance during which the male will deposit spermatophore to a hard surface. The ‘spermatophore’ is a little package with a T-shape on the one end and a sticky end on the other. A little package carrying the sperm. During mating dance, the male will grab the female with its pincers and in this case the chelae as well, pick her up and put her down on top of the spermatophore. She will then lower her abdomen and pick up the spermatophore through her genital opening. This can last for a few minutes afterwich they will seperate and go their ways.
The scorplings develop inside of the female and once ready, the female will give birth to a litter who will the climb on top of the female’s back. After the first molt, they will move off and away from the female.
(Ref Gérard Dupre Supplément au n°78 2016,Scorpion Files News Blog, Scorpions of Southern Africa Jonathan Leeming)