Buenos Aires Scorpion

• It is one of the commonest scorpions in gardens and yards around the River Plate, and is often confused with dangerous species of the genus Tityus, which have a much slimmer tail and a spine beneath the sting.
• Like all scorpions, it glows an intense blue-green under ultraviolet light.
• It is the most common scorpion of the Río de la Plata region and frequently turns up in gardens and courtyards in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
• Its sting is painful but of no medical significance, unlike that of the genus Tityus, which is the dangerous one in South America and with which it is confused.
• Its courtship is a dance: male and female grip each other by the pincers and move about together in the so-called promenade à deux, sometimes for more than an hour, while the male searches for a suitable substrate on which to deposit the spermatophore.
• It is viviparous, and the mother carries the young on her back until their first moult.
• It has been used as a model in studies of sexual selection and reproductive behaviour in South American scorpions.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat & environment

Grassland, stony ground and peri-urban areas of southern South America

Sources consulted: Peretti, trabajos sobre comportamiento reproductor en Bothriuridae; Ojanguren-Affilastro, Escorpiones de Argentina; Polis, The Biology of Scorpions