Velvet Worm

Fascinating facts about the Velvet Worm

• The Cape velvet worm possesses a total of eighteen leg pairs. Seventeen of these are pre-genital pairs that end in functional claws, allowing the animal to grip the leaf litter it moves through, while the final pair is dramatically reduced and lacks both claws and spinous pads.
• Female Cape velvet worms can reach lengths of up to seventy millimetres, while males grow to a maximum of fifty-four millimetres. At the opposite end of the scale, the smallest females measure nine millimetres and the smallest males six millimetres, illustrating a broad size spectrum within the species.
• The entire native range of the Cape velvet worm is confined to the Cape Peninsula in South Africa.
• A colony of Cape velvet worms now survives on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos, far from its original home on the Cape Peninsula of South Africa.
• Santa Cruz Island is home not only to the introduced Cape velvet worm but also to one or more native velvet worm species belonging to the Peripatidae family. This means the island supports both an introduced member of the Peripatopsidae and indigenous Peripatidae representatives, creating a unique assemblage of onychophorans in a single locale.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Velvet Worm

In the damp, moss-encrusted recesses of the forest floor, the velvet worm glides with ethereal slowness, its iridescent, velvety coat glistening like the sheen on a summer's night sky. As it moves, the worm's numerous pairs of stumpy legs ripple in a mesmerizing wave, propelling it through the undergrowth with a gentle, almost languid, deliberation. With each slow, sinuous turn, the velvet worm embodies a tranquil, primeval world, one that has remained largely unchanged for centuries, its very existence a testament to the enduring beauty of life in the hidden, humid corners of our planet.

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