Image courtesy of Erwin Niemand/Shutterstock
Joel Kontinen
Some animals
use metals to strengthen their body parts- just like the teeth in Komodo dragons
(Varanus komodoensis), for instance, and the scorpions also use metals such as iron,
zinc and manganese, and also copper, nickel, silicon, chlorine, titanium and
bromine.
Sam Campbell at the University of
Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues examined the claws and stingers of 18
species of scorpion from around the world to determine the extent and
composition of their metal reinforcements.
The metals
are largely found within the tips of the stingers and along the cutting edge of
the claws, as well as in their mouth and teeth and in their tarsal claws,
making their weapons “like a steel-toe-capped boot”, Campbell says. The rest of
the animal’s exoskeleton is still hard, but much softer in comparison.
Scorpions
all fluoresce light green or blue under ultraviolet light. But metal-enriched
parts of the body don’t glow when exposed to UV, the team found.
It isn’t
yet known how the scorpions obtain the metals that they incorporate into their
exoskeletons, though their prey is the most likely source.
The team
also found that different scorpion species had more metal in different parts of
their bodies, and this is related to their behaviour. “What we identified was
that when zinc was high in the claws, it would be low in the stinger, and vice
versa,” says Campbell. “Because scorpions use their weapons so
differently, it is possible that metal enrichment has adapted to provide
beneficial biomechanical properties in the weapons where it is most needed by
the scorpion.”
Metal
enrichment in animal tissues appears to be more common than once thought,
says Aaron LeBlanc at King’s College London. “A
growing number of studies are pointing this out in vertebrate teeth as well,”
he says. “The next logical step after discovering these features is to try to
understand how they have evolved across major lineages, and this study is a
pioneering one for that reason.”
Source:
James Woodford 2026 Scorpions reinforce their claws and stingers with metals | New Scientist29 April
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