Mother Scorpion Carrying Her Baby: The Photo Is Full of Motherly Love, Until You Know the Terrifying Truth Behind It

Motherly love exists everywhere. However, sometimes, the story is beyond imagination.

You've probably heard many stories of maternal love in the natural world. From the mother whale carrying her dead baby across the ocean, to the father crocodile carrying hundreds of babies on his back to ship them everywhere. And maternal love also exists in the world of insects, although the story is a little different.

Mother scorpion carries her children on her back.

The photo above, featured in an Instagram post by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (USA), shows us that being a scorpion mother is not easy. They have to bear the burden of hundreds of newborn scorpions, carrying them around to provide the best protection.

However, behind this story there are still very scary truths!

The first fear comes from scorpions mating.

Initially, the male and female scorpions will use their pincers to grasp each other tightly, performing a characteristic "dance" of the species - which is used by the female to test the male's strength. Then, the male will rotate, looking for a suitable spot to inject sperm into the body of his partner.

After a few minutes, when the dance ends, they will separate and go their separate ways. Well, not exactly separate ways, because if the female is interested, she will immediately eat her mate so that they can be together forever (female scorpions eating males is also rare). In fact, scorpions do not need individuals of the same species to reproduce. In difficult conditions, they can perform asexual reproduction to ensure the number of species.

Giving birth and raising children

Depending on the species, a female scorpion can be pregnant for up to 18 months before her young are born. This is because, unlike insects and arachnids, scorpions give birth to live young rather than lay eggs.

Scorpions give birth to live young, not lay eggs.

And this is where the scary stuff starts. When baby scorpions are born, their exoskeletons are quite soft, making them easy prey for predators. To avoid this, the baby scorpions will climb onto their mother's back, where they will stay for a few weeks until they are strong enough. The problem is that during this process, the mother scorpion can get excited and eat her babies, if she can't find enough food.

At one time of giving birth, a mother scorpion will only eat 1-2 babies. It's not much compared to the number of babies she gives birth to, but the fact that her babies have to. gamble with their lives makes us feel that the story of motherly love is less meaningful.

And then life goes on. The young scorpion, once strong enough, gets off its mother's back, goes out to explore the world, and then the cycle starts all over again.