Idlewild: I know this little friend! Mostly because we had a seriously dedicated entomologist as a family acquaintance.

Making some new antipodean invertebrates for July, the subterranean month for #InsertAnInvert2024 🧪🐡 You may not know the velvet worms if you live outside the tropics & in the N hemisphere. There are 2 families of them: 1 in the tropics & the other, like my Lino block depicts, from the southern 🧵

hemisphere (once parts of Gondwana). They are velvety (& cute, if ruthless nocturnal sticky slime spitting hunters) but they aren’t worms or even quite arthropods like insects. Onychophora are a phylum of soft-bodied many-legged creatures resembling caterpillars who never become butterflies. 🧵2/n

Velvet worms are generally considered close relatives of the Arthropoda (insects, crustaceans, spiders & such) & Tardigrada (you know, the nearly indestructible tardigrades) with which they form the proposed taxon Panarthropoda. 🧵3/4

They shun light & seek dark places, & some even live in caves. Some velvet worms bear live young! 🧵4/4

I know this little friend! Mostly because we had a seriously dedicated entomologist as a family acquaintance.

I think that’s how I first learned of them myself! They look adorable but seem deeply strange to me the more I read about them.

Yes! I mean the whole ovoviviparous situation is a lot on its own. Tasmania is so full of little evolutionary paths that get weird because it's been isolated for so long. Growing up there made me curious about what's endemic wherever I'm living or visiting. Thank you for making cool, thoughtful art!

Ovoviparity is a lot! Thank you. I had a friend who lived in Hobart for a while and talked about Tasmania a lot. It sounds like a beautiful place.

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