Field notebook
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Animal profile
Euperipatoides rowelli
Euperipatoides rowelli is an onychophoran, a soft-bodied animal with stubby unjointed legs and a velvety skin. It hunts small invertebrates at night in decaying wood. Onychophorans are a small phylum closely related to arthropods and are highly sensitive to drying out.
A velvet worm hunts by squirting adhesive from two nozzles on its head. The jets whip from side to side dozens of times a second, and high-speed filming showed the oscillation is not muscular steering but an elastic instability driven by the flow itself.
A velvet worm ejects adhesive slime from a pair of head papillae, and the nozzles whip from side to side dozens of times a second. The oscillation is passive, driven by the fluid jet rather than by muscle.