Small claws

There's a whole wide world out there of tiny creatures barely visible to the naked eye. Even by the standards of insects, there's a multitude of minute things reduced in scale but rarely in complexity. Springtails, proturans, booklice, dwarf spiders barely a millimetre long, wasps so small they float rather than fly through the air, mites that use flies as free tickets to fresh pastures and flies little larger than a punctuation mark but which prey on even minuter beings. One elusive group of miniature marvels which I first encountered many years ago while doing other things in the bathroom besides showering is the Arachnid order Pseudoscorpiones. Sisters to both spiders and scorpions, pseudoscorpions lack the venomous tail and bite of their cousins. They possess poison glands but these are stored in the pincers which the animals actively brandish whilst walking about in the leaf litter or under tree bark. The largest members of the order reach barely a centimetre, and some are so puny that they spend their lives under the wing cases of beetles, where they feed on parasitic mites. Old records also note that pseudoscorpions have been found in the hair of children as well as mole nests, where they feed on fleas, lice and other sundry pests of grubby young mammals.

My duck discovered a colony of these half-centimetre hunters while recovering from the ardous walk from the Visitor Centre to the main bridge at Sungei Buloh. On one of the cracked pillars that secure the structure, there were what appeared to be ant-size bodies with outsized antennae. Some gentle poking resulted in these creatures making a quick retreat (they seem to scurry backwards as easily as they do forward) to the safety of the cracks. The pseudoscorpions (Allochernes liwa?) form a veritable hive in the wood fissures, which they share with a nest of ants. Unusually for arachnids, pseudoscorpions tolerate communal living and are even reported to hunt in packs. A less savoury aspect of pseudoscorpion society is the penchant of some nymphs to eat their mother alive during times of financial crisis. And when a population outgrows its welcome, the animals disperse by hitching a ride on larger, flying insects or passing mammals or birds. My duck's kind invitation to ferry these fellows to fine new pads was sadly dismissed by this gang, who deemed the offer not worth a pinch.