These amazing animals are some huge IMPERIAL (or EMPEROR) SCORPIONS from west African countries including Togo and Ghana.  Despite their fearsome appearance and reputation some scorpions are actually quite docile, and these certainly are!  They are only active at night and spend the day resting in deep burrows which they have dug for themselves!

Scorpions give birth to live babies rather than laying eggs and in both June 2007 and September 2008 more than 20 babies each were born by two of my female imperial scorpions.  The mother scorpion carries her babies around on her back for the first couple of weeks of their lives and even breaks up pieces of food to feed each individual baby, demonstrating fantastic parenting skills and devotion to her babies!

As the babies grow and develop they moult their exoskeletons and take on more of a typical scorpion shape as seen below, rather than the 'blob of jelly with legs' shape which they have soon after being born as seen above! 

At this stage they also start to become a bit more adventurous and will come down from their mother's back to explore their environment as seen below:

I would never try to remove the babies from their mother's back as she can still be very defensive of her little ones at this stage and will try to sting or pinch anything that moves near to them!  However because they will come off of her back of their own accord I can then handle them and get some pictures to show off how adorable baby scorpions can be, as you can see here:

After another moult the babies have become quite a bit darker in colouration, although still nowhere near as dark as the adults.  At this stage they are about six weeks old, completely independent from their mother and feeding by themselves!  The one below is munching on a baby cricket, which I breed myself to ensure that they always have a steady supply of tiny food to eat!

All scorpions have a venomous (or poisonous) sting but only a very few species are considered dangerous to people.  Most scorpions have a very weak venom and imperial scorpions are certainly one of these.  However, having been stung by one of my adults in 2007 I now no longer handle the adult scorpions like I used to because, whilst not causing me any significant harm, it was a big shock and caused enough discomfort to prevent me from being prepared to risk it happening again! 

My handling of the babies at this size carries no risk at all as the sting of a baby is not even able to break my skin.  In fact the babies are surprisingly calm and docile when being handled and don't even making any attempt to sting as long as you handle them gently anyway, as I always do!