Creepy: Glow-in-dark scorpions seen in video at Georgia park, defying explanations

There are glow-in-the-dark scorpions living under rocks in Georgia and to prove it, state parks officials sent a ranger out at night to find some, armed with only a stick and an ultraviolet flashlight.

The resulting 3-minute video, posted Monday on YouTube, proves scorpions do, in fact, glow fluorescent blue in the moonlight.

It also makes clear that sending someone into the woods to find them in the middle of the night is as creepy as it sounds. The video was filmed at Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge, 50 miles southeast of Atlanta.

“The fluorescence is the result of a chemical reaction,” explains the ranger, as a scorpion sits glowing in front of him.

“The reason why the scorpions glow in the dark are very unclear. A recent study suggest that the scorpions’ cuticle is very sensitive to any change in the surrounding light. It appears the scorpions skin can detect any movement coming from a predator.”

Georgia has two species of scorpion — the southern devil scorpion and the striped scorpion — and their stings are painful but not dangerous, according to BugBustersUSA.com. “However, some individuals with an allergy to venom could experience serious medical symptoms following a sting,” the site says.

Scorpions are known to glow in other parts of the country and one researcher at the University of Oklahoma suggested it could be because they “convert the dim UV light from the moon and the stars into the (color) that they see best – blue-green,” Discover Magazine reports.

“This could explain why scorpion eyes are so exquisitely sensitive, to the point where they can detect the faint glow of starlight ...They amplify those faint signals by turning their entire bodies into light collectors,” the magazine wrote.

Other researchers have guessed that glowing in moonlight may help them find each other at night, or they “do it to dazzle prey,” LiveScience.com reported.

“However, none of these hypotheses hold up to scrutiny, leading some arachnologists to speculate that scorpion fluorescence has no function at all,” LiveScience.com wrote.

This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 1:23 PM with the headline "Creepy: Glow-in-dark scorpions seen in video at Georgia park, defying explanations."