São Paulo, the richest and most populated state in Brazil, suffered a record number of 43,817 attacks by scorpions last year, which have found an ideal place to reproduce in large cities. According to biologists, it is the “pest of the future” and is aggravated by climate change.
“On one occasion we managed to capture more than 40 scorpions in one place,” Gisele Dias, veterinarian and coordinator of the Surveillance of Accidents with Poisonous Animals at the São Paulo Health Secretariat, told EFE.
The state of São Paulo, with about 46 million inhabitants, a population similar to that of countries like Argentina or Spain, had not recorded so many scorpion stings in its territory since 1988, the year in which they began to be counted.
And not only with scorpions, accidents with poisonous animals are an increasing trend in the region since 2017.
For the biologist of the Zoonoses Surveillance Division Gladyston Costa, the increase in attacks by yellow scorpions, the species most present in the city, is linked to a characteristic that allows it to “reproduce alone, without the need for another scorpion”, which is why which he considers is going to become the “plague of the future.”
For this reason, the Health Secretariat of the São Paulo City Council is carrying out actions such as the inspection and capture of these animals in neighborhoods that have been classified as risk, while promoting awareness campaigns among neighbors.
Armed with boots, gloves and long tweezers, three technicians accompany Gladyston Costa to a busy street in Vila Guilherme, a neighborhood located five kilometers from the center of the city of São Paulo.
Their job is to lift the sewer covers, where scorpions usually take refuge. Although on the first and second attempts they found nothing, in the last sewers they found various yellow scorpions, which they proceeded to store in jars.
During the tour, a bar worker, who prefers to remain anonymous, approached the team to tell them that they had found scorpions “several times” inside the establishment.
After a brief inspection, Costa detected that the animals could be entering the business under the door or through the pipes, which did not have nets, one of the most common ways for these animals to enter the interior.
Although they were originally found in forested areas of the region of the neighboring state of Minas Gerais, Costa points out that the scorpions ended up arriving in large cities “transported by trucks of vegetables, firewood and construction materials.”
And they have stayed. They have found in urbanized areas a source of shelter, mainly in pipes and sewers, and food, since they mainly eat cockroaches.
For Dias, climate change has also been a factor that has contributed to this problem, since “with the increase in temperatures, the availability of animals that serve as food also increases.”
According to Costa, once captured, the scorpions are taken to the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, one of the most prestigious scientific research centers in Latin America, “for the creation of the serum that is used in cases of sting,” although – he states – “in less than 1% of attacks you end up needing it.”
Despite this, Dias warns that in cases of children under ten years of age it is extremely important that the serum be administered, since having a lower weight “the poison is more concentrated in their body”, which is why the greater lethality due to these attacks is in children.
With the aim of speeding up the process to obtain the antidote, the São Paulo Health Secretariat has created an online tool in which you can locate the closest point where they have serum to treat stings from scorpions and other poisonous animals.
