Scorpion shines in the dark one to detect moonlight

The scorpions use the mysterious green brightness that emit under ultraviolet light as a rudimentary instrument to decide if the light emitted for the moon is very strong so that the animal skirt of its burrow with security.

As the scorpions they are hunting nocturnal, seems stranger who they present the fluorescence instead of being camouflaged. The researcher Carl Kloock, of California State University, says that the animals produce an amount limited of fluorescent pigments, that if degrades as shines.

Kloock placed 15 scorpions displayed to the ultraviolet light until its pigment had been all used and later it compared the nocturnal behavior with others 15 scorpions that had not had depleted fluorescent pigments. The fluorescent ones had been restricted to a small area, while the others became vacant to perhaps.

crucial point, says Kloock, inhabits in what the animals obtain to see. If, as it seems probable, them they cannot see the component ultraviolet of the light of the stars and moonlight, them they do not know if the night is clear the sufficient to allow that the predators can see them.

Doug Gaffin, of the University of Oklahoma, says that the scorpions can hide themselves in the nocturnal shade under of leves, suggesting that they are very sensible to the light. It adds that the fluorescence can have other functions, such as to inform predators on the poison of the scorpion.