(Click on any image to see the whole photo and start the gallery)
The photo above is our fellow guest Ward, holding a mildly venomous scorpion that the San Bushmen (In this case it was actually a woman that did most of the digging to get to the scorpion.) encouraged, with his mother’s permission, him to hold. Later in the gallery you will see (if you look closely) a meerkat devouring a scorpion, stinger and all, and another one chomping on a large centipede: two of the prized prey items for meerkats in the Kalahari. Both arthropods have the ability to inject venom, but that didn’t seem to bother the Meerkats. Whereas, the large ground beetle I photographed quickly scurrying right by them, our guide, KG, said was avoided by the meerkats. (I believe it to be a member of the family Carabidae, which includes the bombardier beetles that can squirt toxic fluids from their abdomen which because of an exothermic chemical reaction can literally scald their attacker.) You will also see a somewhat blurry photograph of a snake, KG , said was an Egyptian cobra (evidently their range is not limited to Egypt). You may not recognize it because typically they are represented with the hood expanded in strike pose. Ward was interested in it too, but it was interested in getting away from us. The bushmen didn’t seem interested in showing off their snake handling skills, so it was allowed to slither away.
