Animal · Ghana, Togo, Benin
Emperor scorpion
Pandinus imperator — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The emperor scorpion is one of the largest scorpions in the world, a glossy black animal about as long as a school ruler is wide and then some. Under an ultraviolet lamp its whole body lights up in a soft blue-green glow.
Picture credit: Mike Baird (CC BY 2.0) · George Chernilevsky (Public domain) · Jan Ebr & Ivana Ebrová (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the emperor scorpion live?
Home: hot rainforests and savannas of West Africa.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Guinea, the Senegal.
The short profile
Fully grown: up to 20 cm long. It weighs about 0.03 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
Emperor scorpions live in the warm, damp forests and savannas of West Africa, where they dig burrows or move into termite mounds. Their two pincers are broad and strong, and a grown animal usually holds its prey with them instead of using its sting. Termites are their favourite food, along with beetles, crickets and other small creatures they find at night. For people the sting is usually harmless, roughly like a bee sting, and this species is known for being calm rather than quick-tempered. Still, a scorpion is an animal to watch and not to touch, because some people react strongly to stings. A mother carries her ten to twelve pale babies on her back until they have moulted once and can look after themselves. The blue-green glow under UV light comes from a substance in the outer layer of the shell, and researchers are still arguing about what it is good for.
Find it on the globe
Emperor scorpion is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big does an emperor scorpion get?
Adults reach about twenty centimetres from the pincers to the tip of the tail and weigh around thirty grams. That makes it one of the heaviest scorpions on Earth, though a few species are slightly longer.
Where does the emperor scorpion live?
In West Africa, in countries such as Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. It likes hot, humid rainforest and savanna, and hides by day in a burrow, under a log or inside a termite mound.
Why does it glow under UV light?
The outer layer of its shell contains substances that take in invisible ultraviolet light and give it back as visible blue-green light. All scorpions do this; what it is for is still an open question, and researchers are testing ideas about seeing and hiding.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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