Thursday, March 3, 2011

Found This Poisonous Little Creature in the House Tonight

My 9-year-old son shouts, "Dad! Come quick I found a cool little bug with claws" I came quickly, as I wondered what he might have found.

This little creature is a pseudoscorpion. It's a harmless arachnid that has been roaming the Earth for the last 380 million years eating other little mites and flies. The claws have a poison gland to subdue prey in a pinch. Ours was very tiny, 2mm or so long. The photo below shows it to scale with a 12 point font.

The kids and I released our catch back in the basement to continue munching other little crawlies in the house. Too bad we didn't have a tiny radio frequency tracking collar.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Funny, but I just found one of those too. Mine was a red color.