The Velvet worm

The velvet worm is not actually a worm, despite what its name suggests. Onychophorans are there own phylum an date back to the Cambrian, over 500 million years ago. The velvet  worm does in fact have a brain and a nervous system that consists of two nerve cords that go along the length of its body. It is a predator, and use sticky protein that it shoots onto prey to capture it. 

The Two Barreled Boogaloo

The velvet worm uses two  papillae to shoot its gluey trap. The liquid is pushed through its body by muscles that around the length of the animals body operating almost like a syringe.  The slime moves with an oscillation rate of around 30-60 hertz. And there was recently a study done that shows that the friction caused by the fast moving liquid through the papillae causes it come out similarly to a garden hose, without much control to it. It was once believed that the worm controls the motion of this slime but research was done as to why it happens much quicker than any other physical process made by the worm. It was learned that the inertial forces of the liquid and elasticity of the papillae causes the erratic motion.

Equation for fluid papillae interactions (4)

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