Urodacus yaschenkoi

[Dave Jay]

Here are two of my Uradacus yaschenkoi babies , 2nd instar going by the chart in Mark Newtons book.
I collected them myself from the Murray Mallee region in South Australia using pitfall traps. I set 7 traps, got 6 of these babies and one larger. I only had shallow tubs with me (individual kfc potato and gravy tubs) so I only trapped the smallest holes. They are in fine white sand as it closely matches what I found them in. Most sand in the region is coarse red sand, very compacted and I saw many yasch holes in those areas, but these were in very loose fine sand . I keep 4 together in a 14" tank and they get along fine, holding meetings and often sharing a burrow between 2 of them at a time. Advice from Mark Newton is that they can be kept together as they rarely leave their burrow doorsteps so don't interact . It couldn't be further from the truth regarding these guys, they roam around, get together and are always swapping burrows. Theyve been together over 8 months now without incident. Theirs is my most entertaining scorpion tank.

 

[Dave Jay]

A couple more pictures, here's an adult and the underside of one of the little ones

 

[MassExodus]

Nice, those are good looking scorpions.

 

[Dave Jay]

I came across the pictures from when I collected the baby Yasch on holiday.
This first group of pictures is from where I set a few pitfall traps. In the pictures it's really not obvious how many burrows were in the one small sandy clearing, there must have been close to 20 of various sizes in a 2.5m x 2.5m area. The sand was fine and loose, my feet were sinking in as I walked around but the sand was too fine and dry to leave distinct foot prints.
The first two are to give you an idea of the terrain, but the scorpions were found slightly further away from the lake but in the same general area.

This is the clearing followed by a few of the holes. In some cases the holes were only 15cm apart.

 

[Dave Jay]

Here is another area I saw Yasch holes, the sand was red in this area and quite coarse, it was very hard, almost cement like, there was no way I could have dug a hole by hand without bleeding.
The first two photos show a clearing that was dotted with holes, far more than are apparent in the photos. As in the sand dunes around the lake the scorpion holes were in clearings, not amongst the vegetation.
Presumably Urodacus armatus would have burrows in the soil around the bushes and trees and buthoid species would be found under the bark and amongst the leaf litter but using a uv torch at night would be the best way of spotting them, I wasn't about to start trashing the place looking for them plus it was still winter or very early spring so I was surprised that the Yasch were active already.

 

[Dave Jay]

This was the only burrow I found near vegetation all week, it was a lone burrow whereas all the others were in large groups.