Nov. 13, 2013 — Scorpions tend to use their strongest defense mechanisms, according to new research published November 13 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Arie van der Meijden and colleagues at Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO) in Vairão, Portugal.
When attacked by a predator, a scorpion can choose to use either its pincers or its venomous stinger to defend itself. The performance of either the pincers (pinch force) or the stinger (venom strength) can depend on scorpion physical characteristics, like size and shape. But the actual mechanism that the scorpion chooses to use when defending itself -- it can use the pincers, the stinger, or both -- can depend on other evolutionary adaptations, so it's not clear whether their behavioral responses are actually correlated with maximum performance ability.
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