Stings Like A Bee Few Inland Northwesterners Realize They May Be Sharing Campsites With Scorpions

One of the benefits of living in the snowbelt states is an outdoor life free of vermin such as copperhead snakes, brown recluse spiders and chiggers.

But campers headed to the Columbia or Snake river basins probably don’t know they’re sharing the ground with scorpions.

“Most people haven’t seen them because they’re nocturnal,” said Hugh Homan, University of Idaho entomologist. As many as five species of scorpions can be found in the Snake River canyon and areas farther south in Idaho, he said, noting that they all look alike, except to a taxonomist.

“You probably wouldn’t find any at Moscow, but you certainly would near Lewiston,” he said.

About 20 scorpion species are found in the United States.

Mike Hollingsworth of Spokane was surprised to find a scorpion in the Hawk Creek area of Lake Roosevelt recently.

“We showed it to people that have lived here for years and nobody had ever seen a scorpion around here,” he said.

“We only have a single species that ranges this far north as far as I know, but it’s not rare for them to be here,” said Paul Kats, Washington State University entomologist.

Indeed, scorpions have been recorded as far north as Medicine Hat, Alberta.

The secretive scorpions generally come into the open only at night to hunt for other insects. During the day, they hide under rocks, logs or other debris.

The sting of some scorpions found in tropical regions can be extremely toxic. But scorpions in this area pack a sting comparable to that of a bee.

“People have allergic reactions to bee stings ranging from mild to severe in rare cases,” Katz said. “The potential would be the same with a scorpion. As long as you’re not sensitive to it, the sting would cause little trouble.”

In North America, one would have to go to southern Arizona, New Mexico or Texas to begin finding the more dangerous scorpions, which Katz says are of the family Buthidae, one of two families of scorpions in the Western Hemisphere.

This far north, scorpions are of the gentler family Vejovidae.

“We have more problems with spider bites in temperate regions, but in the tropics scorpions are more important from a public health standpoint,” he said.

Stretched out, the scorpion Hollingsworth found at Hawk Creek was 1 3/4 inches long. Homan said the species found in this region can range up to 3 inches.

In the tropics, however, they can be 8 inches long. While they resemble a crustacean, they are arachnids, members of the same class of creatures as spiders and ticks.

Unlike a bee, the scorpion never leaves a stinger in its victim. The scorpion stinger is connected to a poison gland at the end of the tail. The scorpion grasps its prey with pincers that somewhat resemble those of a crayfish.

When necessary, the tail is arched over the scorpion’s head to deliver a sucker punch, spiking the stinger into the prey.

The stinger can foil the armor of beetles by wedging between the bug’s abdominal segments, Homan said.

Scorpions have their young en-masse, so it’s possible to turn over a log and find a swarm of them.

But it’s more likely that generations of the region’s outdoors people will continue to camp, hike and fish without knowing they are in scorpion country.

That is, unless they went scouting at night with a “black light.” Scorpions are fluorescent when exposed to ultraviolet light.

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