Handy camping tool – or not?

On our last camping trip the sandy tent area we pulled up at was pitted with unusual crescent shaped holes in the ground – cause UNKNOWN.

Included in our camping kit for the first time was a new gadget, a ‘black light’ (ultraviolet) torch. Why? Because some minerals such as calcite and hyalite (a form of opal) fluoresce under ultraviolet light. And what better way to entertain yourself after the sun goes down than doing a bit of UV fossicking.

Walking around in the dark with the new gizmo we found no fluorescent rocks but noticed that in those crescent shaped holes were creatures that did fluoresce. But they quickly ducked back into their holes before we could make out what they were.

We eventually found a creature out in the open glowing bright blue in the UV light (pictured above). We did not really have to use our white-light torch (pictured right) to identify it as a scorpion.

Scorpions are arachnids (just like spiders). They have eight legs, two large pincers and a tail equip with a sting. No one understands what chemical in the scorpion exoskeleton causes it to fluoresce under UV light. Nor do they understand the reason why scorpions fluoresce at all.

Suffices to say that the UV torch will remain in our camping kit so we can hunt down fluorescent minerals and invertebrates. That is, if we really want to know.