Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel bomb here with a classic episode of the podcast. This one is about the wonderfully strange phenomenon of scorpions glowing green under black lights. Not velvet paintings of scorpions, actual scorpions, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vocal bomb here. Some animals are just over the top. Take scorpions. Is it not enough that these stinging arachnids can survive some of the harshest climates in the world and live twenty five
times longer than your average cockroach? Or that some species don't need males to reproduce and can live up to forty eight hours without oxygen, and that all of them will eat almost anything they can subdue, even other scorpions. No, it's apparently not enough, because scorpions also glow electric cyam green under ultraviolet light. Why they do this is a bit of a mystery, but it makes them pretty easy
to study. All a scorpion researcher has to do to find scorpions is go out into the desert at night with a black light and watch those suckers light up like Christmas trees. Chemically speaking, Nobody.
Is exactly sure what causes scorpions to glow, but we know its powerful stuff. When a scorpion is preserved in alcohol, the alcohol itself will fluoresce. Scorpion fossils have even been induced to glow under black light after hundreds of millions of years. What we do know is the chemicals that make a scorpion so rave ready are in the outer layer, or cuticle, of its exoskeleton. Scientists call it the highland layer.
Scorpions molt their exoskeleton every so often in order to grow, and researchers have observed that until the slightly mushy outer shell has entirely hardened, the highlind layer does not fluoresce under UV light. This is all pretty weird. Why would an animal evolve to glow under ultraviolet light? Researchers have posited a bunch of different ideas. Scorpion fluorescents might help them find each other in the dark, protect them from sunlight,
or even confuse their prey. But there's another promising theory that scorpions are somehow using their fluorescence to detect UV light, mostly because they want to avoid it. They're night hunters, after all, and a scorpion will always find the darkest place to hang out during the day or even in the moonlight. A study published in the Journal of Arachnology in twenty ten tested normal fluorescing scorpions and a group of scorpions that they had reduced the fluorescence of with
prolonged exposure to UV light. The normal scorpions then reacted more strongly and negatively to UV light than the desensitized scorpions. But wait, you might be thinking. Scorpions still have eyes, and as it turns out, they can visually see light within the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, but it doesn't
seem like the scorpions were reacting visually. A separate study published in Animal Behavior in twenty twelve basically blindfolded a group of scorpions and found that the critters still reacted to the presence of ultraviolet light. So it seems that they're using their entire bodies as giant UV seeking eyeballs, and that if they sense that they're glowing at all, it's time to scurry off somewhere darker. Today's episode is based on the article why scorpions glow under black Life
on how stuffworks dot com. Written by Jesslinshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com.
And is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.