Adorable velvet worm composite

Too busy to write a proper post these days, but just happened across a cool Current Biology quick guide to onychophorans(=velvet worms), with a pretty picture showing their diversity (and really pretty textile-like patterns):

Australian onychophorans (Blaxter & Sunnucks 2011 Curr Biol)

The guide itself is quite interesting, recommend reading it if you have time. To entice you, they talk about the diversity of breeding behaviours found in onychophorans:

"Some are fully live-bearing (viviparous), with well-developed placenta-like, extra-embryonic structures that attach to the mother's uterine wall and nourishes growing embryos until the birth of sequences of self-reliant, mini velvet worms."

Onychophorans are way cooler than arthropods ;p

And they can be social with dominant/submissive behaviours, which I talked about in an earlier post (which happens to be one of my most visited, probably because it's not about protists =( ).

And with that, there may or may not be a surprise while I'm away, so stay tuned. In any case, I should engage in some form of proper blogging sometime after the 20th... (finals, shoot me)