MIDLAND, Texas — While not a full-on desert, the Permian Basin area is considered a semi-arid part of Texas.
“So here in West Texas, we live in a semi-arid climate," said Dan Grigsby, NewsWest 9 meteorologist. "We see between 14 and 15 inches of rain here in the Midland and Odessa area. Which isn’t a whole lot compared to the rest of Texas, where to the East they see between 30 and 40 inches, even 50.”
But despite that, species like the scorpion can still thrive out here.
“They are primarily nocturnal predators," said Michael Nickell, museum scientist for the Sibley Nature Center in Midland. "They’re related to spiders, and they hunt mostly insects."
The semi-arid climate has more of an effect on their behavior than you might think.
“Scorpions, they don’t have the ability to regulate their own body temperatures, and so whatever the ambient temperature is, that’s going to be their body temperature," said Nickell. "Sometimes it can be too hot, too cold for them, so they’re gonna have to go someplace to adjust their body temperature to meet their needs.”
Nickell also said this could be part of the reason why scorpions sometimes find their way into our homes.
But why is it that overall, it seems we don’t see scorpions around here as often as we would in places like, for instance, San Antonio?
“Well, it’s more humid there," Nickell said. "And plus, you have a wider variety of species of scorpions than we do have here. It’s more of an arid region here and so we’ve really got not quite as big of a diversity of scorpions as you would in San Antonio.”