Hyderabad: A spine-chilling video of thousands of scorpions in a room has gone viral on social media with over four million views in barely 12 hours since it was uploaded on Twitter on Sunday.
While the origin of the video or where it was recorded is unclear, the house where the deadly invertebrates were crawling was described in the tweet as "abandoned" at least in terms of humans living there. Due to the reported Portuguese accent in the recording, some assumed that the video was recorded in Brazil and that the species of scorpion is native to Brazil.
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"For anyone curious on what species these are, it seems to be the deathstalker scorpion (Leiurus quinquestriatus) which has the most dangerous venom of any scorpion and the most expensive liquid so this is most likely a farm," (sic) read one of the many comments on the Twitter video.
A little bit of digging on the internet revealed that the same video was uploaded on Reddit last year as well. In that video too, it was claimed that the room was infested with deathstalker scorpions. A deathstalker scorpion's sting is extremely painful and also causes paralysis, an inability to move or feel part of the body. The scorpion uses this venom to hunt insects such as crickets, which are its main food source.
Interestingly, the deathstalker's venom is the most expensive liquid in the world at $39 million per gallon, according to a report by Business Insider. But it's not so simple to just buy a gallon - one has to milk one scorpion 2.64 million times to fill a gallon. There are about 2,000 species of scorpions, though only 30 to 40 of them have venom strong enough to kill humans.