Extra Poison Discovered in Scorpions’ Arsenal
- Share via
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Not only do they hide in shoes and dark corners, waiting to sting the unwitting, but scorpions also pack a secret weapon, researchers reported.
Certain species secrete a painful and paralyzing “pre-venom” in addition to the normal poison used to kill enemies and prey, a team at UC Davis found.
This “pre-venom” seems to be biologically cheaper for the creatures to make, perhaps giving them an easy way to scare off predators and catch small bugs to eat, the researchers reported in Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
