Deathstalker Scorpion

Scorpion are ectothermic and have to seek heat for their surroundings. Scorpions are covered by exoskeleton that helps to support and protect its organs from external forces. The body of scorpion are divided into two sections, the prosoma (cephalothorax) and the opisthosoma (abdomen) (Rubio 15). The Chelicerae allows for the scorpion to tear and grind food into smaller pieces before going into the mouth to by digested. They also have a pair of median eyes, these eyes are are a primate way to perceive depth and spatial awareness. while lateral eyes seem to be more of a biological clock in a sense. The metasoma is looks like what you would call a tail portion of the body that is made up of five segment and at the end it has the telson, which has a portion that contains the stringer that is called the aculeus (Rubio 17). The metasoma contains portions of the intestines and hindgut. It can be used for stinging (for prey and defense), digging, scraping, balance, and climbing (Rubio 18). The Telson also contains the venom glands that produces a toxin. The anal opening is located between the last segment of the metasoma and the telson in the soft tissue. Scorpions have four pairs of jointed legs, which allow them to get around, as well as dig. The scorpion also has a pair of pedipaps , which has the pincers at the end. The main use of pedipaps are for grabbing, holding, and crushing prey, they can also be used for protection,digging, and sensing the surroundings. Scorpions have pectines that allow them to detect vibrations as well as pick up pheromones during mating season.They have setae that are hairlike structures that allow them physical, thermal, chemical, and humidity information from their surroundings.

Toxin

When someone gets stung by a Deathstalker the initial symptoms usually associated with most envenomation (pain, muscle contractions, excessive salivation, respiratory irregularity, twitching and convulsions, an unstable pulse rate, and erratic body temperature), the seriousness of a sting is often initially underestimated (Rubio 34). If the sting has been not treated this can lead to being fatal by heart failure, this happens by the patient going into shock, develop progressive respiratory paralysis, have pulmonary edema, and heart inflammation; with the eventual result likely being heart failure (Rubio 34). Their Venom is most toxic of any known scorpion, they cause 85 percent of all strings report and 90 percent of the deaths caused by scorpion stings (Rubio 33). Chlorotoxin is a peptide in the venom, which is being studied.

[Chlorotoxin has several properties that make it a good starting point for drug design: (i) it is able to bind preferentially to tumor cells, making the design of therapeutics using chlorotoxin as a scaffold to treat glioma and other types of cancer of neuroectodermal origin such as melanoma, neuroblastoma and medullobastoma possible; (ii) to date, no obvious toxicities nor immunogenic responses after being administered to humans have been reported; and (iii) chlorotoxin is reportedly able to enter the brain and be internalized by cells, suggesting that it could be used to deliver drugs to the brain and/or intracellular targets] (Ojeda, Wang, and Crail).

Chlorotoxin has some possibility in the future to help with curing diseases but there needs to be more studies to be done to tell if they will actually be beneficial.

Reproduction