Video of a Costa Rican Onycophera

We found this Onycophora (velvet worm) at the Las Cruces field station in Southern Costa Rica. Onycophora are cool, little understood, ancient critters that are related to the Arthropods (insects, crustaceans, etc). Their body is entirely soft and they move pneumatically, that is, they don’t really have muscles, just different sets of valves that inflate and deflate their legs with fluid so they can walk. That’s why it looks so cool as it glides along. Onycophera shoot a sticky substance out of their antennae, to capture prey.