Black fat-tailed scorpion

Androctonus bicolor

Name means: “Androctonus means man killer, and bicolor means two colours.”

The black fat-tailed scorpion is a chunky black and brown scorpion with a thick tail. It comes out at night and hides in cracks during the hot day.

Fun fact: this one is not an insect. It is an arachnid with eight legs, a cousin of the spiders.

Lives in

North and West Africa and the Middle East, in dry sandy places and desert edges

Length

4 to 6 cm (1.6 to 2.4 in)

Top speed

about 2 km/h (1.2 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Dangerous: look, do not touch

What does it eat?

It eats insects, spiders, lizards, mice and even other scorpions. It can go for months without any food.

How big is it?

as long as 2 toy building bricks in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 1.8 seconds

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Black fat-tailed scorpion about 2 km/h (1.2 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

cool stuff

The biggest ones reach 8 centimetres, about as long as your finger.

It can only swallow liquids, so it uses small claws by its mouth to pull its food into tiny bits.

It gets the water it needs from the animals it eats.

It can live for up to 5 years.

you asked

?What does a black fat-tailed scorpion eat?

Insects, spiders, lizards, mice and other scorpions.

?Where does the black fat-tailed scorpion live?

In warm, dry, sandy places in North and West Africa and the Middle East.

Androctonus bicolor (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
Picture by Guy Haimovitch. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.