Velvet Worms: A Fierce Hunter with a Secret Weapon
Imagine an animal that resembles a caterpillar hunting with a glue gun. Velvet Worms: A Fierce Hunter with a Secret Weapon is a smaller-scale exhibit in the Arthropods Gallery that shines a light on this little-known creature in a category of its own. Velvet worms are not worms—or caterpillars. They are the closest relative to arthropods, and they have remained largely unchanged for 300 million years.
Museum of Comparative Zoology Director Gonzalo Giribet curated the exhibit and took the colorful photographs on display. Visitors can view a short video that showcases rare footage of the worms’ unique hunting technique: velvet worms shoot glue-like slime from nozzles to entrap their prey. Another video highlights the research being done by Dr. Giribet and the MCZ to determine how velvet worms colonized different environments over time without changing significantly.
Get up close to specimens of velvet worms from across the globe. You can even explore a velvet worm in detail by touching an oversized 3D model made from a CT scan.
The exhibit is supported in part by a collaborative National Science Foundation grant between Gonzalo Giribet of Harvard University and Gustavo Hormiga of The George Washington University.