Vinnea the Vinegaroon

We are very sorry to say, our off-exhibit vinegaroon passed away this past weekend. Adrian found her Sunday morning. Typical of her easy to care for nature, she was up on top of the soil, so that we didn’t have to dig around for her.



Theoretically, an Animal Caretaker doesn’t have favorites, but likes all the animals equally. In reality, there are exceptions, and Vinnea was one of them. She was an industrious little arthropod who won our love by her methodical, even obsessive digging and tunneling. When she appeared to be gravid, we were like a whole team of aunts and uncles, rooting for her to give us little “mini-garoons” to dote on. And when it became clear that she was suffering from ill health, we all wanted to find the magic bullet that would help this mysterious little animal to get well.

Unfortunately, not much is known about vinegaroon husbandry. We are pretty good at keeping them alive and happy, but not so much with the big life transitions – reproduction, shedding, and death. I believe she had shed her final skin already when we got her, but I will always be sorry she didn’t get to have those babies, if there were any.


Vinnea spent her declining years in the home she excavated for herself, or making periodic visits to the surface to look for crickets and water. She never knew cold, predation, or drought. She had dark places to go, and lighted areas to give her a circadian rhythm. I believe we did whatever was possible to make her happy.


She will be missed.

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Vinegaroon Babies?

If you ever take a walk through the Insect Village at Pacific Science Center, you may have noticed the vinegaroon (vih-nih-guh-roon). This animal is one of our non-insect arthropods, and it is closely related to scorpions. Recently, when animal caretakers passed by the cage, they found themselves doing a double-take. When did the vinegaroon get so fat?!?!



Like all arthropods, vinegaroons have a hard exoskeleton that they must molt as they grow. When we looked at our vinegaroon a few months ago, we thought it appeared a little overdue for a molt. You can often tell when an arthropod is close to molting: Their bodies may expand or contract rapidly, they may change color, and usually the joints in between their exoskeletal plates begin to stretch out. This is what we noticed with our vinegaroon. But when it still had not molted after a few weeks, we started to get concerned.

Luckily, we got a timely visit from a former Animal Caretaker and insect specialist, Julie LaTurner. After a short observation, Julie had a hunch that something else was going on. She suspected that our vinegaroon was gravid, a term used instead of ‘pregnant’ for egg-laying species.


Few people have had much success getting vinegaroons to reproduce in captivity. A gravid vinegaroon excavates a chamber and walls herself in before producing her eggs. Our vinegaroon was probably seeking a place to burrow. In the exhibit cage, we use sand as a substrate, which is difficult for vinegaroons to dig through. But once we provided a better substrate for her to burrow, she went to work.


At first we were encouraged when the gravid vinegaroon immediately disappeared into her substrate. But then we again became concerned when we didn’t see her for a couple of weeks, so we checked through the substrate to make sure she wasn’t dead. Sure enough, we found her burrowed deep in the soil, with a large egg sac attached to her abdomen. Julie was right!


Inside the burrow, the vinegaroon will produce an egg sac that will remains attached to her body until her eggs are ready to hatch. When they hatch, the babies crawl out of the sac and onto their mother’s back where she protects them until they go through their first molt. After that, the babies leave the burrow. The mother stops eating while tending her eggs. She usually does not live long after the babies become independent.


Luckily, our vinegaroon’s second burrow is right up against the side of her enclosure, so we can check up on her through the clear walls (we keep it covered most of the time). We are not sure when her eggs will hatch. Little is known about raising vinegaroon hatchlings in captivity, and the odds are against us. But we will still root for the best, and hope to soon welcome new hatchlings into our collection.

While our gravid vinegaroon is on maternity leave, a younger, non-gravid vinegaroon is taking her place on-exhibit.

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Bugs From Arizona

Each year Pacific Science Center sends a representative from the Life Sciences Department to the annual Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference. Last week, Life Sciences Manager, Sarah Moore attended and was able to work out a mutually beneficial maneuver with a few of her peers. Here is Sarah’s story:

Seattle was hot earlier this month, but it was even hotter in Rio Rico, Arizona. That’s where I attended the 2009 Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference. This annual event brings together teachers, insect hobbyists, invertebrate zookeepers and conservation workers to discuss the minutia of invertebrate behavior, ecology and husbandry, and how to make more people say “Ooh! Ah!” and fewer say “Eww! Ick!” about bugs.

It is a chance for people who care about the smallest creatures in our environment to talk with each other and be reminded that yes, small is beautiful. Little lives still matter, and preserving a habitat for beetles or teaching a child not to hurt a spider can have many beneficial impacts, including the conservation and greater knowledge of many larger life forms. It is also a chance for organizations that exhibit insects to meet and form friendships with the breeders and vendors who provide them.


One of the highlights of the gathering is getting to see what cool animals Hatari Invertebrates brought this year. This small but reputable company, specializing in Sonoran and Southwest arthropod species, always has amazing, beautiful and diverse insects, spiders and scorpions available for exhibit.

This year, while waiting in line to buy some velvet ants and grasshoppers, I caught the eye of Woodland Park Zoo’s Manager of Collections, who also happened to be attending the conference.

“Hey,” I said, “Are you adding arthropods to your collection too?”
“Yes”
“Well, I am purchasing some spiders for Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium as well as insects for our own display. Can we all ship them back together?”
“Sure. That would be ideal because the more organisms we ship, the larger and more heat-resistant container they can be transported in” (not actual words used, we don’t talk that way).

So all the regional purchases came back to Seattle in one big foam box. This not only saves on shipping costs, it is far safer for all the animals being shipped. A larger box with thicker walls is better insulated against extremes of heat. It also holds more air, which helps keep the insides of the cages from getting waterlogged or drying out.

At one time, regional organizations may have viewed each other as competition, or as having missions so different as to prevent working together. It was nice to share in this small way with our local zoos, knowing that the message of wonder these tiny animals bring is equally important to the work all three organizations do.






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