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Day 8 #ArtAdventCalendar: an adorable, caterpillar-like blue velvet worm from New Zealand or Aotearoa I made for #InsertAnInvert2024!
Velvet worms (phylum: Onychophora) are named for their velvet-like texture and somewhat wormlike appearance. They are elongate, soft-bodied, many-legged nocturnal animals who spit slime to trap prey, somewhere between worms and arthropods. 
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Like an arthropod their heads have segments but otherwise they have wormlike bodies. They have flexible wormlike skin but like insect skeleton in composition. They have insect-like limbs, but they are unjointed and conical in shape. They look like caterpillars who don’t become butterflies. The two extant families of velvet worms are Peripatidae and Peripatopsidae. And amongst the latter there are some in the genus Peripatoides which exhibits lecithotrophic ovoviviparity; 2/n
that is, mothers in this genus produce and retain yolky eggs in their uteri. The eggs are fertilized internally, and babies develop inside their mother until large enough to be born, in batches of 4–6, as colourless miniatures of the parents! Peripatoides novaezealandiae is a species complex of velvet worms in the genus Peripatoides, found throughout New Zealand. 3/4
This print is made based on photos of P. aurorbis, but all the Peripatoides novaezealandiae have no morphological characters that distinguish them.
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