Tiny children whose families have no car or phone to call for lifesaving care die just because it's the straw on the camel's back. It's not that the scorpions are meaner but that people are more vulnerable. Lourival Possani, a renowned biochemist who runs a research lab in the scorpion-ridden city of Cuernavaca, is even trying to use scorpion toxins to defeat malaria. In his crowded laboratory, research assistants milk scorpion venom from such species as the hand-sized African Pandinus imperator. The potential anti-malaria application will need years more detailed study, but if successful it would neatly bring full circle the centuries of efforts in Mexico to live with and even exploit the scorpion.
Scorpions are arachnids sometimes mistaken for insects.
In burrows under rocks and logs, and in sand. Scorpion stings are painful but rarely lethal to humans. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.