page_title: Arizona bark scorpion
section_title: Venom
hierarchical_section_title: Arizona bark scorpion / Venom
caption_attribution_description: English: A frontal view of the Bark Scorpion of Arizona.
context_page_description: The Arizona bark scorpion is a small light brown scorpion common to the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. An adult male can reach 8 cm in length, while a female is slightly smaller, with a maximum length of 7 cm.
context_section_description: The Arizona bark scorpion is the most venomous scorpion in North America, and its venom can cause severe pain (coupled with numbness, tingling, and vomiting) in adult humans, typically lasting between 24 and 72 hours. Temporary dysfunction in the area stung is common; e.g. a hand or possibly arm can be immobilized or experience convulsions. It also may cause loss of breath for a short time. Due to the extreme pain induced, many victims describe sensations of electrical jolts after envenomation.
  Fatalities from Arizona bark scorpion envenomation in the US are rare and are limited to small animals (including small pets), small children, the elderly, and adults with compromised immune systems. Extreme reaction to the venom is indicated by numbness, frothing at the mouth, paralysis, and a neuromotor syndrome that may be confused with a seizure and that may make breathing difficult, particularly for small children. Two recorded fatalities have occurred in the state of Arizona since 1968; the number of victims stung each year in Arizona is estimated to be in the thousands. In Mexico, more than 100,000 people are stung annually, and during a peak period in the 1980s, the Arizona bark scorpion claimed up to 800 lives there.
caption: Frontal view of an Arizona bark scorpion in a defensive posture
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