Black rock scorpion

Appearance

Measuring up to 5.5 cm, it is dark brown or black. It ranges from Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria into South Australia. Its preferred habitat is granite outcrops in open forests. It excavates a burrow underneath rocks or logs with a terminal chamber and passage to the surface. It preys upon insects such as cockroaches and beetles, as well as other invertebrates such as millipedes, centipedes, spiders, and rarely earthworms. Its sting can cause local pain and swelling in humans.

Naming

The black rock scorpion was described by Swedish naturalist Tamerlan Thorell in 1876 as "Ioctonus manicatus". The type locality was described as "New Holland". In 1888 Reginald Innes Pocock, an assistant at the Natural History Museum in London, was cataloging specimens of the genus and described what he thought was a new species—naming it "U. abruptus"— from two dried female specimens, one from Adelaide and the other labelled "New Holland". German naturalist Karl Kraepelin concluded that Thorell's "I. manicatus" was the same species as "U. abruptus" and "U. novaehollandiae". It was also collected from Cooma by William Joseph Rainbow who named it "Buthus flavicruris" in 1896. The genus "Urodacus" was placed in its own family in 2000. Before this, the group had been a subfamily Urodacinae within the family Scorpionidae.