This rare camel spider was found in the Southern Okanagan at Hayne's Lease Ecological Reserve.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Alex Vanbeest

Oliver resident Alex VanBeest has always loved looking for elusive animals and insects and recently found a more uncommon one he has been hoping to find for years.

VanBeest found a camel spider while exploring Haynes Lease Ecological Reserve with his family in the South Okanagan, Aug. 17.

“We were looking for snakes and I was flipping logs over when I came to a sandy spot filled with sage brush,” he said. “I flipped over a dead piece of sage and there it was, I’ve looked for camel spiders for over a decade.

“He was in the sand and ready to bolt back down his burrow but I gently scooped him up and took a few pictures before letting him go.”

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VanBeest said he grew up on a farm and has a life-time love of insects, spiders and snakes, even the most fierce looking critters like camel spiders. 

“There’s not much known about them, they’re rare and hard to find because they’re nocturnal and stay hidden in burrows under things during the day.”

Camel spiders are also known as wind scorpions, and while they look like a cross between a scorpion and a spider, they are neither. The creatures are animals in the class arachnida and order solifugae, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

While the critters are only two to four centimetres long, they look fierce and are known to be aggressive hunters of insects. They have distinctively large chelicerae — pinchers used to crush prey — and long leg-like structures called pedipalps that have sticky ends to help capture their victims.

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VanBeest is not deterred by the camel spider’s scary looks.

“I look past that, I see beauty in their intimidating looks, these are so cool and very specialized. Sometimes camel spiders will sit in burrows and wait for prey to cross their path, feeling the prey’s movement with the hairs on their bodies.”

There are roughly 900 species of camel spiders in the world that make up 12 families, and most live in hot, desert regions. Only one family of camel spider lives in Canada and can be found in the southern parts of BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

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To mate, a male will transfer a drop of sperm to the female genital opening with his chelicerae. She will then dig a burrow and can lay up to 200 eggs, which she protects and catches prey for after they hatch.

“The females will dig really deep burrows in the sand and lay eggs, they’re very protective mothers, they are fascinating animals," VanBeest said. “I’ve been enamoured with camel spiders since finding a dead one a long time ago, I was overjoyed to finally spot one.”

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