![]() Beta carboline will fluoresce when exposed to UV light, causing the scorpion to glow an eerie greenish blue glow. We do know how they fluoresce, and that is due to the presence of beta carboline in their exoskeleton. But there are some interesting theories as to why scorpions fluoresce when exposed to UV light. from Michigan State University.Did you know that scorpions glow when exposed to a black UV light? Have you ever wondered why? He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alabama and his Ph.D. Whit Gibbons, professor emeritus of ecology, University of Georgia, grew up in Tuscaloosa. A UV flashlight can be just one more reminder that life on earth has many facets we have yet to discover. We often interpret the natural world around us in simple terms based on what we can perceive. Manipulations through technology have revealed there is even more to see. Many of these amphibians are naturally colorful creatures. Cloud State University in Minnesota published online by the scientific journal “Nature” revealed that most salamanders have body parts that reflect colors when illuminated by a blue light. Special lighting has revealed many other animals that display colors otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Much larger than any of the powder flecks we were tracking, it turned out to be a cherry millipede, more than 2 inches long, ambling across the forest floor. Kurt and I were surprised when we saw a bluish glow on the forest floor. ![]() The powder gradually falls off as the turtles move through the leaf litter, allowing us to follow their shining trails. Kurt Buhlmann and I were once using blacklights in a forest as we looked for glowing specks of fluorescent powder he had placed on baby turtles during a field experiment. Whatever the biological function of fluorescent properties, if there is one, it has nothing to do with people. Maybe it is just something our technology has revealed and it serves no purpose. Hypotheses include dispelling or confusing predators, protecting the scorpion from sunlight or serving as some kind of scorpion signal for other scorpions. Whether glowing in response to UV light has a purpose for the scorpion is even less clear, although scientists always enjoy speculating. Part of the physical explanation is that although the short wavelength UV light is invisible to humans, when it reflects off of fluorescent molecules it assumes a longer wavelength that we are able to see. In fact, a few fossil scorpions millions of years old have been found in which the cuticle continues to glow. The persistence of the fluorescent molecules is measured not in days or years, because even scorpions preserved for decades in museums continue to glow. When scorpions shed their skin, which they do periodically, they do not glow until the cuticle grows back. Scorpions have hard shells like crawfish, and the fluorescent property is in the shell or cuticle. The explanation for why scorpions glow in the dark when you shine a UV light on them is not completely understood. Each was beneath the cover of a bush of some sort, minding its own business. After 15 minutes of wandering around in the desert night with our blacklights, we had located more than a dozen glowing scorpions. We walked up to the large scorpion and peered down at it. The eerie bluish glow looked alien beneath a creosote bush. We had barely stepped away from Randy’s Land Rover before we saw the first one - a glowing scorpion a hundred feet away. Our ultraviolet flashlights were the only illumination within 25 miles, the distance to the nearest town. ![]() He, my son, my grandson and I were on a nighttime excursion into the desert. Randy, a naturalist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, knows more about southwestern wildlife than anybody else I can think of. But when we turned the lights on, they emitted a purple glow, not a beam of white light. We figured we would have to watch for rattlesnakes. The desert sands had cooled down to the mid-90s. When Randy Babb handed us flashlights in the middle of the night in the Sonoran Desert we were not surprised. ![]()
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