Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/20/venomous-scorpions-invade-urba.html
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swarms of venomous scorpions
That is NOT a line you ever want to read or hear. Straight out of an old school Saturday afternoon black & white creature double feature horror flick.
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It won’t last. All it means is that the scorpions’ rural habitat had been destroyed and they’ve been pushed into the city. With the worldwide collapse in insect populations, their food source is almost gone, and they’ll pretty much die out in a year or so.
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Now that’s not a nice way to describe the ruling party, even in a hard-right autocracy.
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Pfft, no biggie. Just release a bunch of Bolivian Tree Lizards to eat them.
But, you say, what happens when we’re overrun by lizards? No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They’ll wipe out the lizards.
What if the snakes are even worse? In that case, there is a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
But then we’re stuck with gorillas, right. No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
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I am no biologist but I’m pretty sure scorpions aren’t bugs.
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Unless they adapt to living off of the endemic cockroaches/ants which have adapted to live in human housing. Or to feed off human flesh…
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If there’s a legitimate ecological niche they can fill in urban areas i don’t see them going away. The only barrier would be their ability to adapt fast enough to pesticides and contamination from urban areas, along with having steady access to prey.
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Based on this section:
Worse yet, the species terrorizing Brazilians is the highly dangerous yellow scorpion, or Tityus serrulatus . It reproduces through the miracle of parthenogenesis, meaning a female scorpion simply generates copies of herself twice a year — no male participation required.
I’m going to assume that the hard right autocracy isn’t in favor of these particular scorpions. Parthenogenesis is calculated to squick team Family Values on essentially all counts except birth rate.
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Don’t be ashamed to scream - it helps to relieve the tension.
with their exoskeleton, they definitely are hardware.
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