Deathstalker Scorpion

The deathstalker, Leiurus quinquestriatus, is a scorpion in the family Buthidae, also called the Palestine yellow scorpion or Omdurman scorpion, and measures 30 to 77 millimeters, averaging about 58 millimeters. Its venom, a potent mixture of neurotoxins including chlorotoxin, charybdotoxin and scyllatoxin, causes intense pain and is rarely fatal to healthy adults but poses a real danger to young children, the elderly and people with allergies or weakened immune systems, with pulmonary edema the usual cause of death when a sting does prove fatal. The species ranges across desert and scrubland from North Africa through the Middle East, including the Sahara, the Arabian Desert and the Thar Desert, from Algeria and Mali eastward through Egypt and Ethiopia to Kazakhstan and western India.