A scorpion that was discovered in a Vancouver home has now given birth to about 20 babies.
Staff at the Victoria Bug Zoo confirm in an online post that the scorpion has produced about 20 offspring, and the whole family is doing well.
WATCH: Vancouver woman finds scorpion in her kitchen
The bug came to the zoo after Gail Hammond found it in her Vancouver home and captured it alive. Hammond had returned from a trip abroad and wondered whether it stowed away in her luggage.
The scorpion was initially identified as a potentially deadly species found in the Caribbean, but experts at the bug zoo determined it was a less venomous species known as the Cuban scorpion or Heteroctenus Garridoi.
When Hammond learned the scorpion was pregnant, she joked that she was glad she found the arachnid before there was “a bunch of little scorpions running around the house.”
Now the scorpion, which staff at the bug zoo have named “Gail” in honour of the woman who found her, is busy raising a brood that is clustered on her back.
“Right now it looks like she is covered in weird, giant pimples,” Jaymie Chudiak of the Victoria Bug Zoo said.
Chudiak said some visitors to the bug zoo are squeamish at the sight of the scorpion and her offspring, but “for the most part people are like, ‘Wow, what a good mama.'”
— With files from Sean Boynton and The Canadian Press
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