I didn’t know they ate them live; I thought they were skewered live and roasted before eating…
I’ve seen stuff about them being batter-dipped and fried too…
Seen Bear Grylls eat them alive. He just cuts off the stinger and in they go!
Bear and Andrew Zimmer will eat anything you put in front of them. Maybe the nastiest thing I’ve seen Bear do is skin a dead seal he found and wear it as a wetsuit.
Man you got me laughing out loud really! I could only imagine that story, it seems like one of those Chevy Chase comedies! great memories to talk about around a campfire!
I think I’d rather do that than eat a live scorpion.
LOL that sounds cool (kinda)
On one of his 1st season shows he found a dead caribou (something like that) and he skinned it and then slept wrapped up in under a rock…. lol. He will do some very outrageous stuff!
Just a quick note, the notion that young scorpions inject more venom because “they don’t know how” to regulate the amount is false. The adults don’t even have the ability to regulate injection volume. In the young, the venom is underdeveloped and generally not even used while they’re still on their mother’s back, which is why they ride their mother’s back for the first few weeks after they are born. Also - remember that they can only inject the amount of venom that has been developed and stored in the tiny sac within the bulbous base of their stinger at the tip of their tail. So, if you think about it, those babies (1-2mm) have a venom sac smaller than the tip of a ball point pen which = such a small amount of under-developed venom that even if they were old enough for their stinger to be able to penetrate the thickness of human skin, we wouldn’t have any reaction at all to that sting. Their venom becomes more and more toxic and effective as they mature, not the other way around, and the adults can pump in a much higher volume of a much more toxic venom, and it is never voluntarily regulated.
Just a little geeky info from a major arachnid geek. I can back this stuff up with documentation if anyone would like. Fascinating animals. 
Ahhh, but do you have any recipes?
Deep Fried Scorpions Scroll down a few for this one, lots of yummy bug treats mmm mmmm! I particularly note this warning: “Freeze live scorpions overnight, or even for several days (although it is highly unlikely, some species of scorpion have been known to re-animate once thawed, so be aware).”
Tough ’lil critters!
Edit + 1 this just sounds too yummy!
>>>>>Just a little geeky info from a major arachnid geek.
Wow! That’s interesting stuff! For some reason, I don’t get notified on many threads any more, so I lose ’em, so I haven’t been back to this one for a while.
Rick will be happy to know that the stings weren’t full power, but I +ASSURE you that the babies sting. I saw the welts …. and I saw Rick a-dancin’ and a yippee-ky-aying as he got stung. (Also saw a woman undress buck naked in a kind of weird screaming punk dance in the Lone Pine Post Office because she had a scorp in her pants …. She got undressed about as fast as Rick did )
Is there any truth that the bigger a scorp is, the less potent its venom? Old timers are always throwing that one around. Of course, how do you know what’s a small scorp species or just a juvenile giant desert hairy? (The ones out here hurt worse AFTER the sting. I often get a baseball-sized welt that feels like someone hit me with a steel pipe about 30 minutes after the initial sting. Not that I get stung that much. Like 3-4 times in 20 years.)
I know that the bark scorpion (which we don’t have around DV — or so rangers have told me) can be fatal to little kids and dogs/cats. I think it’s about the only one in the U.S. that can be fatal.
I saw some bark scorps at the living desert museum in tucson a few years back, and they were tiny, so their venow sacs may be small, but the evil juice from those buggers packs one heckuva wallop. Of course, the bark scorpions I saw could have been youngsters. Didn’t think to ask.
I was told by a roving band of entymologists in Owens Valley (desert area in eastern Calif.) that most everything around here are giant desert hairies, and they get BIG. I felt one crawl over my foot one night while relighting the water heater.
Note that I said “felt.” Not that I could feel him on bare skin. I couldn’t. But I could feel his/her weight as he walked across the top of my tennis shoe. Now that’s a big scorpion when you can feel the weight! I quickly looked down and saw him skitter off under the house. (probably looking for the highway to me bed, where they really like to congregate for some reason — on MY side. Not my wife’s side.)
I have a desert hairy in a paperweight and he’s about 4.5”, although it’s hard to tell exactly because he curled up a bit. That’s a small one. There are some in the Lone Pine Museum that have to be more than 6”.
How big are those ones you are finding in Texas?
WHERE ARE MY UV LIGHTS??? I need them before I go back to DV in the fall until spring!
We have several species of scorps here in AZ, and a bunch of them are Centruroides genus, which are the common bark scorpions. Several species have less toxic venom, but Centruroides sculpturatus - The Arizona Bark Scorpion (Basic Info ), which live all over my yard and sometimes end up in the house, are the most venomous scorpion in the U.S. I’ve been stung once, but that was just a dumb mistake on my part. I will tell you with absolute certainty that the idea that older scorpions lose their toxicity. Probably closer to the opposite.
My sting was on the tip of my middle finger and felt like I got hit with a hammer + burning electric shock, and the pain was intense for a few hours, spread up through to my shoulder. After that, my entire arm was highly sensitive, and eventually within 24 hours or so, felt like it was asleep with a dull electric current buzzing through UNTIL i bumped my finger on something, then it shot through my arm like when you bump your funny bone. I wouldn’t say it was fun. But I will say, because I weird like this, that I was thoroughly impressed with the venom of these little guy, and fascinated with the effects. My assailant was a fully matured male. They are small, but that tiny amount of venom surely packs a wallop. I do not expect a sting from a smaller bark scorpion to match the effects I had from that sting.
We have many other species out here, including the Desert Hairy scorps, which are my favorite simply because of their size. They are bad ass predators to anything they can catch and kill, but their sting is no worse than that of a bee. I capture them by hand and let them crawl on me. Then again, I’ve done that with the bark scorps too…but not quite as comfortably. 
Desert hairys will get up to about 6 inches or so, the bark scorps usually not much longer than a couple inches. They do look quite different, actually - regardless of age:
Bark Scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus)
Giant Desert Hairy (Hadrurus arizonensis)
Very cool pic I found of a desert hairy under UV:
*Also note the larger thicker pinchers and tail on the desert hairy - all the bark scorps have very skinny pinchers and tails, especially the males, which are very slim and flat looking. The one in the pic above is a female.
Ahh…fun hunting!? Mine involves gun powder. So I understand that they’re going for a premium once they’re weaned, assuming they’re purebred! 
Admittedly the UV stuff is pretty cool!
Agreed! I have no ethical issue with catching and selling as many of these little guys as I can, and there is no law in AZ to prevent me from doing so. Snakes and mammals, however, I would not collect and sell. Against my Naturalistic religion.
Also, I am TOTALLY down to cook a few up and try them as a delicacy. Even though I like them alive. Hard to explain, I guess.
For anyone who has too many and would be willing to figure out how to ship them out from your yard alive, bark scorpions bring as much at $25 a piece in the pet trade on the East coast. There are a lot of geeks like me who would be willing to BUY scorpions. I, myself, don’t need to buy them.
Also, a few educational institutions need them for venom research. They may to pay, but they would be very appreciative of a shipment of some live ones to study. You should be able to google both exotic pet dealers and Universities that have a call out for live scorps, but if anyone is interested I can find out some specifics if need be.
Been in this field for a long time and I know a lot of people out there, both pet enthusiasts (dealers) and academic. I have no issue making myself more valuable to folks in some way here on BLF.
And yes, the UV stuff is WAY cool. Ordered my first UV drop-in yesterday. I will put it to good use. At some point I hope to fork out the coin for a good 365nM drop-in as well.
LOL!
I just ordered my first SWMBO approved lights!
Two of these dropins http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/taiwan-3w-380nm-uv-flashlight-dropin-module-42v-max-p-5697
And two hosts of this type: http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/sky-ray-sr5-flashlight-tube-deep-metallic-blue-no-led-emitter-p-10824
Our curiosity was triggered when we saw that AMBER glows blue under UV lights. So hopefully we will be able to receive and use these hosts before I go back to sea again.
I love BLF. TY to OP an everybody who contributed to this thread. So cool!
I have a couple of pieces of amber with insects trapped inside (ebay oddity) and I didn’t know that amber would glow under UV… I’ll have to take my amber home tonight and try the UV light on it to see how it glows…
Would you get better results from a 365nm LED?
I cant back it up but its supposed to be the best for bringing up everything.
Got mine late yesterday and have been playing with them ever since! SUPER thanks to Keltex for listing his scorp hunting adventures and turning everyone on to the potential of these UV drop ins. Won’t be heading out to our Death Valley house for the winter until it cools down a bit, so actual scorpion hunting hasn’t occurred yet … But I may try some scorp hunting around here in the SoCal coastal scrub. I remember the most scorpions I have ever seen was in the coastal scrub/trees of Stinson Beach in NorCal. Was like a blooming scorp farm, so there has to be some down here in the dry areas.
Bought three hosts and two drop-ins, and I’m glad I did because the switch in the 501B tube is broken …… Garrrrr. But everything else works great. These drop-ins are BRIGHT. One is brighter than the other, of course, not significantly, but just enough to drive my anal nature crazy.
Where we are in DV was also a huge silver mine where they also mined tungsten. Tungsten ores are hugely fluorescent, so that will be another use for the light. I have used smaller UV tube lights in a couple tungsten adits up there and it was like going into a funhouse tunnel because of all the bright fluoresence, so this even brighter light should be startling. Even calcite which is everywhere looks like a movie effect with UV light. Looks like I will be doing some fluorescent mineral hunting!
Although scheelite looks better detected with a shorter wavelength. I do have a dimmish SW tube light but don’t use it much because I am always afraid of inadvertantly looking at it and going blind. :–0 I know I know. Won’t happen but ……
And I do have UV tube lights for looking for scorps, but the things are so dim that you practically have to be an inch from the scorpion for it to glow, so not very practical for scorp hunting unless you crawl on all fours through the creosote and cholla.
Just don’t let your wife use one near your toilet! She’ll have a heart attack and you’ll spend the next day steam cleaning bathrooms. Even a couple urine spatters under the UV light are so bright that it looks like someone peed all over the walls.
And you think your well-behaved cat (or dog) never does his business inside? Bo hahahahahahah. Get a UV light and be shocked: Your whole house is your pets’ bathroom.
Thanks again! These will be hours of fun.
Did you order the MF drop-in, Ubehebe ?