It is said that he has a very poisonous bite with a anesthetizing effect, which lay eggs in the camel stomach, that you scream as you chase you, that you cut your beard as you sleep and you use it to get a nest: the lonelyalso called camel spider or scorpion of the windis the protagonist of countless hoaxes and metropolitan legendsalmost all originating in the regiments of US soldiers during conflicts in the Middle East. The most common myth is that this animal has, with insistence and great speed, people and camels. Unlike all the other characteristics that are attributed to it, the result of total imagination, this behavior has a fund of truth. The lonely, 8 -legged arachnids that arouse interest and fear for some time, are night animals And lovers of the shadow and fresh: if they are under the shadow of someone and this moves, they will tend to move too to continue shelter from the sun, giving the impression of chasing the person. This misunderstood behavior, combined with its threatening aspect, has helped to create a completely false reputation For an animal actually completely harmless to man.
The lonely: great and frightening, but harmless to man
Even if they are sometimes called camel spiders or wind scorpions, the solifugues are neither spiders nor scorpions, but belong to a separate order of arachnidsthe solifugae. There are over a thousand species of lonely but the most famous (and at the center of most of the metropolitan legends), the Galeodes Arabs, It is also among the largest, reaching in some cases 15 cm in length, including the legs. With a sand yellow color, it has a couple of eyes in the center of the head and of the big jaws (the chelys) in the shape of a toothed caliper, which sometimes reach a third of the body size.
Their bite, although painful given the size of the chelicers, is not dangerous for human beings: the lonely are completely without the poison glandsand they bite very rarely even if caused. Are predatory animals present, that hunt at night Small invertebrates thanks also to sensory chemocetric setules (i.e. capable of capturing specific chemical stimuli) on the lower surface of their body, the so -called malleoli. Like many arachnids, the solifugues can move with relative speed up to 16 km per hour: in the metropolitan legends, their speed is often exaggerated, together with their presupposed tender to jump on the prey from over a meter away.
The origin of false myths on the solifugues
The vast majority of the metropolitan legends that surround the solifugues comes from Tales of American soldiers on a mission in the Middle East during the 1990 Gulf War and the war in Iraq in 2003, areas where the Galeodes Arabs. Faced with this not very familiar animal with a threatening appearance, misunderstanding his shadow research behavior as attempts to attack people or camels, the soldiers begin to spread dating on the alleged danger of these animals, deliberately exaggerated for dramatic purposes.
The most common myth according to which the solifugues pursue camels and men is actually linked to their tendency to every now and occasionally use the shadow to cool off a little. As the name suggests (Sol – sortole, Fugere – run away) are night animals and they prefer to be in the shade And in the cool instead of the direct sunlight. When we move, they tend to move too, to stay in the shade. And this gives the impression that they are chasing us to attack us!
These legends also spread through email chainsaccompanied by photos in which the perspective caused the size of the solifugues to be magnified. The most macabre legend is that the bite of the solophane contains a “substance similar to novocaine” which makes completely insensitiveallowing the lonely to bite you during the night and gnaw you undisturbed. And it is also the most span in the air: not only the lonely do not consider us a prey, but they don’t even have poison glands. Such rumors about the fact that they make eggs in the belly of camels (or humans), or shout during the pursuit are equally false – all the solifugues lay their eggs in the ground e Nobody is able to issue sounds.
The pliers of their jaws, together with their habit of Cover the nests Using animal hair, it meant that in South Africa the solifugues are called Baardskeerders, “Tagliabarba ” rumor which, like the others already mentioned, has no foundation. Despite their appearance, therefore, the solifugues are totally harmless to us humans, and their reputation is nothing more than the result of their search for a place in the shade.
