Desert Scorpion Hunting and Masterful Engineering

Scorpions have a reputation for being fierce killers, but only a few deserve it. Most are like snakes, wanting to go about their business, only striking at humans when they feel threatened. Few have venom that is dangerous, but this child still prefers to keep them at a distance.

Some folks consider them pests (even though they eat other pests). In warmer climates, desert scorpions have their limits and will enter homes to cool off in the air conditioning. Much obliged, Pard! The dangerous bark scorpion is fond of climbing, so that is a problem in someone's home.

Scorpion, WikiComm / Marshal Hedin (CC BY-SA 2.0), modified at remove bg, Pixlr

Apparently nobody knows why they show up under UV light, but that is to our advantage. Another interesting fact is that scorpion venom is used to fight cancer.

In the Southwest of the formerly United States, the Mojave Desert claims territory in four states. Desert scorpions go out at night to hunt for food. Physicists can describe the exceptionally small units of measure that scorpions use to detect vibrations, which are used to catch and kill their prey with amazing efficiency.

There are several factors involved in this hunting that challenge Darwin's disciples. As other things with irreducible (and specified) complexity, everything has to be in place at the same time or nothing works. In addition, their "oldest" fossil shows that scorpions have always been scorpions — no sign of evolution here, Bruce.

A question occasionally raised to biblical creationists is that why, if everything was very good after God finished creating, are there so many critters with both offensive and defensive capabilities? For a discussion on that, see "When Did the Very Good Creation Get Very Bad Things?" I want to add that I agree with other creationists who say that the Creator probably "front-loaded" organisms with traits, and these were switched on after Adam sinned and the Curse was pronounced.

Living in the highly arid and hot region of the Mojave Desert, a sand scorpion must hunt its prey at night. Its visual, olfactory, and auditory abilities are minimal, and not sufficient in the nighttime desert to catch prey. Yet, catch they can, with remarkable efficiency. When a beetle comes within a couple of feet, the disturbance that it creates on the sand is detected by the scorpion first to determine direction, then to determine distance. 

To read it all, visit "Minimal Complexity Problem in Prey Detection by the Sand Scorpion." If you ignore the evolution and millions of years stuff, the following video has some interesting biology. Y'all in the Southwest know about turning your shoes and boots upside down in the morning, don'tcha?