Scorpions are armed with dual front pincers (technically known as chelae or pedipalp appendages) and a venom-injecting telson, or stinger, on the posterior of their tail. These things look dangerous enough on their own, but a chemical examination showed they contain metals like zinc, manganese, and iron. “What we didn’t know was whether scorpions evolved to be like that or if it was accidental and they were just picking the metals up from the environment.” To answer this question, Campbell and his colleagues examined how metals are distributed across the stingers and pincers of different scorpion species.