The velvet worm is neither velvet nor a worm. These small hunters (ranging from 1 inch to 1 foot in length) belong to their own little phylum of Onychophora. They move like caterpillars (similar speed too), but their 'feet' (which again, aren't feet--they're called lobopods) move through hydrostatic pressure, since these critters have no skeleton and little in the way of musculature.
Q: So, what do they hunt?
A: Invertebrates.
Q: Ah, but how do they hunt?
A: When they spot prey, they spray a sticky substance at it, at a distance of over a foot and a half if needed. The goop quickly congeals and cements its prey to the ground, giving the velvet worm the opportunity to eat at its leisure. The velvet worm undulates up, bites the prey with its mandibles, and injects its own blend of digestive juices, which liquefies the innards of the prey. The velvet worm then slurps up the invert-gut-gruel.
Q: But how does it access the gruel?
A: By rasping its prey with its tongue that is covered with sharp teeth.
I'll stop asking questions now. I don't like where this line of inquiry is going.
Thanks for the photos, Jelo.
Ewww! Streams of goo! It's Spiderman's evil doppelganger.
ReplyDeleteStill...lobopods. That's just a cool word. I might like some lobopods, if they weren't associated with a raspy tooth-tongued innards slurper.
In other news, the velvet worm has filed a patent infringement lawsuit today against Wham-O, the makers of Silly String.
ReplyDelete^ *cackles at post above*
ReplyDeleteLook at his feet! err.. lobopods! So stubby. He's cute but only in the 1 inch range. And not if he were hunting me.
Quick Velvet Worm! Use String Shot! It's super effective!... and disgusting
ReplyDeleteThis is just the best blog - I learn thew coolest and most disgusting things here! :D "Onychophora", "lobopod", Silly String as a weapon/trap...
ReplyDeleteI sort of want to pet it, it looks soft. This blog is desensitizing me.
ReplyDeleteThat last photo vaguely resembles an 1950s era scientific fiction movie! But truth is stranger than fiction, even science fiction!
ReplyDeleteYUK! Nightmare stuff. Thank god they ain't bigger.
ReplyDeleteLove it! Shoots goo, teeth on the tongue, bad date but fun lifeform!
ReplyDeleteI love velvet worms! This guy (and the Tardigrade, or water bear) is to all other arthropods what the platypus and echidna are to all other mammals (more or less).
ReplyDeleteOnycophorans are now exclusively terrestrial, but in the paleozoic they lived throughout the oceans. To any fossil nuts out there: that bizarre Burgess shale thing, Hallucinigenia, is actually one such marine Onycophoran.
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&q=hallucigenia&btnG=Search+Images
For maximum ugly-factor--find yourself a close-up of a living one's face! It looks kind of like a meat grinder mixed with that pit monster from star wars that digests you over a thousand years... you know what I'm talking about...
Gol dang, seeing well enough to aim a foot and a half would seem to make this among the best sighted invertebrates, unless they employ the shotgun theory; the "if necessary" verbiage seems to imply they're sharp shooters.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, brings up a question - how far can the keenest invertebrate see?