Book Scorpion

Chelifer cancroides, commonly called the house pseudoscorpion or book scorpion, is a species of pseudoscorpion in the order Pseudoscorpiones, class Arachnida, with a cosmopolitan distribution, mostly synanthropic and harmless to humans. These tiny arachnids measure two and a half to four and a half millimetres in body length, with elongated pedipalps extending seven to nine millimetres, a teardrop shaped body, mahogany colouring, and a twelve segmented abdomen of which only ten segments are clearly visible. They live in houses, barns and chicken coops as well as tree bark, caves, bird nests and beehives, and often travel by phoresy, riding on bats, flies and hymenopteran insects. Females lay twenty to forty eggs that take ten to twenty four months and three moults to develop, and the species typically lives three to four years; like other pseudoscorpions it uses venomous pedipalps to subdue prey, its venom containing peptides toxic to bacteria, fungi, arthropods and mammalian cells.