Key to Families.....Taxonomic overview....Bibliography

Eremobates eggs and newly hatched (first instar) young.           ©Warren E. Savary, 2003

Newly hatched solifugids are rather helpless.  Their chelicerae and limbs are poorly developed and the young are incapable of feeding.  After about a week, they will molt and become miniature versions of the adult, with functional legs and chelicerae, at which time they will begin to disperse.

Female Eremobates (palpisetulosus group) feeding on termites ©Warren E. Savary, 2003

Many solifugid species are associated with termites.

This photograph of a pair solifugids belonging to the genus Galeodes has been circulating around the internet along with horror stories about the 'danger' they pose to troops.  The solifugids appear disproportionately large as a result of having been photographed from a very close distance with a wide angle lens.  Most of the stories circulating with the photograph are patently false.  The ventral view of the lower solifugid offers an excellent view of the racquet organs or malleoli, which are highly developed and richly innervated sense organs with which the solifugid picks up chemical cues.  Unfortunately, the photographer is unknown.

Base of the fourth leg of Eremobates pallipes Muma                      ©Warren E. Savary, 2003
Note the subdivided femur and subdivided trochanter, an arrangement unique to the order Solifugae.  Solifugids, together with pseudoscorpions, also lack a patella (a leg segment found in spiders, scorpions, and other arachnids).  The sensory racquet organs, or malleoli, borne on the trochanters and coxae of the last pair of legs, can also be seen  in this photograph.