The Velvet Worm- not as soft as it sounds.
Like many over these past few months of lockdown, I have found the call of the natural world a taunting ghost disrupting my attempts to settle into the routine of being indoors. All I wanted was for something to transport me out of my bedroom and into vast deserts or thick jungles- but the flower aisle on my weekly supermarket trips would has had to do.
An area of solace, a safe haven from monotony, came in the form of my personal discovery of a fantastic, albeit spineless, little beast: the velvet worm.
As I discovered watching the beautifully shot Netflix documentary Our Planet, these Panarthropods are not only funky looking, practically unchanged since the Cambrian and highly social (I KNOW RIGHT? SOCIAL WORMS??), they have a feeding mechanism which blew my mind so much that I must have lost at least three friends because I just wouldn't shut up about it.
Glue. Webs. How cool is that?
The velvet worm hunts only by night, sneaking up in a stealthy, wormy way, to avoid detection by predators, then shoots glue webs out of glands on the sides of its face which harden, trapping the prey so the worm can take its time lumbering over to inject it with saliva. This saliva essentially digests the prey inside, so the worm can simply wait and then enjoy its fresh bug smoothie.
