Camel Spiders and Scorpions
A former colleague of mine who is now working at a UNHCR refugee camp in Chad was recently back in the U.S. where she spent some of her holiday after being evacuated. (I say holdiay because she is returning to the Sudanese border in a few days’ time.) The story of her evacuation was harrowing, but it is her story, and so I will not share it here.
What I did want to post was her account of camel spiders, a creature I have never heard of but which may have gained some notereity among American army families who have husbands or sons over in Iraq.
What struck me about the spider (which, so it happens, is actually not a spider but part of a different family of insect altogether) isn’t so much it’s size or the cunning way in which nature has made it match the sandy environments where it lives, but the fact that, at least according to my colleague, it’s natural parasite is a scorpion. Camel spiders are so called because they often carry a scorpion on its back. So two for the price of one!
However, a bit of lazy internet research did not reveal any info on the scorpion-camel spider relationship. I’m hoping someone can help tell me if this is just another myth.
According to the website, camelspiders.net, camel spiders suffering from the following misconceptions:
1. Camel spiders can move at speeds over 30 MPH, screaming while they run.
2. Camel spiders can be as large as a frisbee.
3. Camel spiders venom is an anesthetic that numbs their prey.
4. Camel spiders can jump three feet high.
5. Camel spiders get there name because they eat the stomachs of camels.
(Not my usual political/newsy fare, but I’m hoping someone reads this and can tell me about what relationship, if any, exists between camel spiders and scorpions.)
Technorati: Chad, Iraq, Camel Spiders, Camel Spider, Scorpions, Scorpion
May 7th, 2006 at 9:09 am
The BugInfo.com site has a pretty good article about camel spiders. Looks as if they would be great to have around if one has a problem with certain pests. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.buginfo.com/articles/camelspiders.cfm
Your link to CamelSpiders.net is incorrect. Try using this one: http://www.camel-spiders.net
Wish we had a couple of these bad boys (camel spiders) back when I was a kid. We would’ve scared the daylights out of the girls in the neighborhood…:-)
May 23rd, 2006 at 11:49 am
I spent four months in the Saudi Arabian desert in the summer of 1998 while in the U.S. Air Force. During our down time we cought a large camel spider and a large black scorpion. We put them together in a rigged up cage to watch them fight. The scorpion repeatedely stung the camel spider over and over, but the camel spider emerged victorius as it slowly ate the scorpion alive while being stung. After all of the stings the camel spider was hurt and never quite the same. It eventually died a couple of days later from what I recall.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I’m a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger and we repeatedly see these increadibly large spiders carrying around scorpions. However we have difficulty in finding out more information about them. We call them chariot spiders.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Speaking of camels…
http://pastexpiry.blogspot.com/2010/01/cartoon-camel-parking.html