Why Scorpions Glow in the Dark

"Should I go out tonight, or should I stay in my hole?" I can relate, little scorpion, I can relate.

Hypothesis: Veritasium holds a camera to interview and has someone filming him holding a camera to interview because he has no tripod

"Even platypuses glow under ultra fluorescent light" Of course they do: what exactly was evolution thinking when they created the platypus?

I love the fact scorpions can incorporate iron and nickel into the tips of claws and tail. THAT IS SO METAL! (sorry, I absolutely had to)

Alternate hypothesis: scorpions are really into the rave scene.

"Platypus also fluoresce" Why am I not surprised? Nothing about Platypus surprises me anymore

Was shocked to find fluorescing scorpions in central NC - they were so small, about the size of a pencil tip, but clearly had green-glowing tails even under natural light. I haven't seen them since I got chickens 😂

6:25 I just love how the phanerozoic eon only goes back 1/9th of the history of the earth, it's like abundant life just began a moment ago

"If there's light at night, it ain't alright." - Scorpion, probably

"Should I go out tonight or should I stay in my hole" - my spirit animal the scorpion, apparently

Hi, My family always watches your videos. We live in Sweden and this summer we went to Greece for vacation. We had a pretty large circular swimming-pool about 1 meter deep and about 10 meters in diameter. And me and my family started walking around the pool trying to get the pool in a circular motion. We asked some other people for help and they did help us. We were in total 7 adults and 5 kids doing it. The motion in the ocean :) began and every new person that entered the pool felt it and had to go with the flow direction. The funny thing is that we did this every day for a week and everybody believed that this was a pool that had fans and they swam around and around enjoying the pool. When we told people that this was not a mechanical motion and that it was started by us walking around most people did not believe us. The problem was that we just had an idéa that we tried and it worked but we could not explain it. You could make a video explaining this and I bet people with circular swimming-pools would go nuts over it. Sorry for my terrible english.

This professor is badass. Admits to being wrong, that it happens oftens, and also not "professional" in his demeanour. He's joking and being nerdy. Love him

Fun fact: Sea scorpions (extinct) were also fluorescent. Horseshoe crabs fluoresce too, and are the sister group to all arachnids. Horseshoe crabs rely heavily on moonlight to time their mating migration. So if the common ancestor of scorpions and horseshoe crabs also fluoresced, it’s a good bit of support for the moonlight detection hypothesis! Or it’s a spandrel. One or the other.

What i found with my own scorpions is that after they molt they are not florescent under black light untill their exoskeleton hardens again.

You probably won't see this, but congrats on the 10mil. It's been a long road and you have been consistent throughout when it comes to making quality content that educates and doesn't mislead people. You are the biggest channel I subscribe to by quite a ways, and it's not because you are trendy or topical or clickbaity (lol). It's because you are awesome and you're genuinely doing the same kind've thing that other legendary educators did when I was a kid. Congratulations, and good luck.

Hello Derek! This was an awesome video. I loved seeing the professor's enthusiasm and appreciated you letting him speak about his working hypotheses and experiments while giving background information on the science in the video. As someone in research myself, this style of exposition did not go unappreciated and I'd love to see even more videos like this covering a whole range of scientific/mathematical phenomena!

Earlier this summer, I went on a short night hike with some rangers in Copper Breaks State Park, Texas. We took UV flashlights and our group counted about 70 scorpions along the way. Until that night, I had no idea that they glowed!

The one creature that have successfully fused rave culture with metal…

i really love him telling us about the hypothesis that proved out to be wrong and the thought process behind it

5:35 if you shine a light on your skin, you can feel it, but it doesn't mean you can "see" the light, like where it's coming from or distance, you just know when your arm is hot or not