Scorpions are eight-legged arthropods. A member of the Arachnida class and belonging to the order Scorpiones, there are about 2000 species of scorpions. They are found widely distributed south of 49° N, except New Zealand and Antarctica. The northern-most part of the world where scorpions live in the wild is Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in the UK, where a small colony of Euscorpius flavicaudis has been resident since the 1860s.
The cuticle makes a tough armor around the body. In some places it is covered with hairs that act like balance organs. An outer layer that makes them fluorescent green under ultraviolet light is called the hyaline layer. Newly molted scorpions do not glow until after their cuticle has hardened. The fluoresent hyaline layer can be intact in fossil rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old. The body of a scorpion is divided into two segments: the cephalothorax (also called the prosoma) and the abdomen/opisthosoma. The abdomen consists of the mesosoma and the metasoma.
