Acid-spraying arachnids crawl out of burrows looking for ‘food and love’

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas — Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the state’s creepy crawly arachnids.

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Big Bend National Park is warning visitors about the vinegaroons.

If you do not know what a vinegaroon is, WOAI described them as an acid-spraying arachnid that lives in burrows.

But summer rains are flushing the nightmare fodder from their homes and now they are in “search of food and love,” park officials shared in a recent Facebook post.

They are about three inches long and have large pedipalps, or mouthparts, that can pinch.

If that isn’t enough they can shoot a spray of vinegar-like acid from the base of their “whip” as protection, WOAI and the Park Service said.

They can’t see well and are nocturnal, living on millipedes, scorpions, crickets, cockroaches and other creatures.

Females carry their offspring on their back.

A reporter with the Houston Chronicle dubbed the arachnid “land lobsters from hell.” She also called them “demonic arachnids.”

According to the American Museum of Natural History, there are actually seven different species of vinegaroons living in North America and more than 120 worldwide.

They are also called a whip scorpion for their whip-like “tail.”

The giant North American vinegaroon, called Mastigoproctus giganteus, was discovered in 1835 and lives in Florida, Texas, Arizona and central and northern Mexico.

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