Scorpions

By The Pest Guide Team · Updated September 25, 2026
Edited by Fellipe Antequera · Editorial policy

Picture stepping out to the garage in your bare feet late at night, shining a blacklight along the drywall, and watching a pale, eight-legged silhouette suddenly light up in a glowing neon green. What pulls these creatures into a single group is not a dry laboratory list, but a very specific physical blueprint you can spot with your own eyes: a fused head and chest, four pairs of walking legs, a pair of forward-facing grasping claws, and that signature segmented tail ending in a curved stinger. You will also find they all move with a quick, skittering gait and share a nocturnal habit of hugging walls and baseboards rather than spinning webs.

You can easily tell them apart from their crawling neighbors, such as spiders or daddy-long-legs, because none of those other visitors pack both front pincers and a tail stinger in one package. People often mistake camel spiders or large harvestmen for them when finding something scuttling across the basement floor, but a quick glance at the rear end clears up the confusion instantly. If it lacks a tail extension and a visible stinger, you are looking at something else entirely, no matter how many legs it happens to have.