Velvet Mites

This animal is: real

Note: There are several families of velvet mites, here I talk about the True Velvet Mites belonging to the family Trombidiidae. The above picture depicts a generic true velvet mite rather than any particular species. This is because information on specific species is hard to come by. So, here I talk about true velvet mites in general. There will be both vague remarks and sweeping generalisations! 

These mites can be found walking about in plant litter (and on walls) pretty much the world over. Typically bright red (although some are orange or come with pretty white splotches) they are some of the most conspicuous mites around. They are also HUGE (by mite standards), most are around 4 mm in length, but the mighty Giant Velvet Mites of the genus Dinothrombium reach up to 12 mm long. 12mm!! That’s like the size of a fingernail! 

When I think of velvet mites, I think of the adults. The eight-legged fluff nuggets wandering around looking for little bugs to eat or sometimes stuff to scavenge. 

But they don’t look like this all their life – they actually have quite a complex life cycle involving lots of stages: egg, pre-larva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph and adult. Basically, as babies they only have six legs. These youngsters are parasitic and feed on the haemolymph (bug blood) of insects and arachnids. They are the shiny red dots you may have seen clustered on the legs of harvestmen or the bodies of butterflies. Most do not harm their host (although I can’t imagine the host enjoys carrying the little vampires around). Once they’re done sucking, they detach and moult, becoming eight-legged adults. The adults of most species are covered in lovely velvety fuzziness and have small eyes on little stalks. 

Royal Natural History volume 6 (1896) edited by Richard Lydekker has a section on the species Trombidium holosericeum which includes a little picture, and has some delightful description of the animals, which are referred to as “Velvety Mites”: “They are beautiful and striking objects, resembling tufts of bright blood-red plush.” 

Its bright colour results from carotenoids and warns predators that the mite is toxic if eaten. 

I’m usually not keen on parasites, but I will make an exception for these fluffy fellas. 

External links:

The bit of Royal Natural History volume 6 (1896) I quoted from on Wikimedia Commons

Some photos of a giant velvet mite from Malawi on iNaturalist. You can see how huge it is! 

A photo of a baby velvet mite on Wikimedia commons. It actually looks kinda cute as it drinks the innards of a harvestman. 

Information on velvet mites from the genus Allothrombium on Les carnets nature de Jessica (Jessica's nature notebooks)

Information on mites, including velvet mites, on A Chaos of Delight

Sha or Set Animal

 This creature is: mythological 

In Ancient Egyptian mythology, most of the gods can appear in multiple forms. Typically, they can appear as human, or as an animal. Some have more than one different animal form. Then there is the animal-headed humanoid form that most of are familiar with from illustrations and pop culture.  

The Sha is one animal form of the god Set (also called Seth or Sutekh, among other variations of the name). Because of this it is also called the Set Animal. It is also sometimes called the Typhonic Beast as the god Typhon is seen as the Greek equivalent to Set. 

Most of the animal forms of the gods are easy to identify (Horus is a falcon, Anubis is a jackal…) but not so for the Sha. We have no real clue what it is! 

There are some theories though.

The beast is often likened to an aardvark, anteater or donkey. The Egyptologist Ken Moss suggested the Set animal could be a Saluki dog with cropped ears. Another theory is that it represents a now extinct animal, which I think is the most plausible. 

Personally, I think the Sha’s curved snout looks rather like a tapir’s. Perhaps it could have been a big-eared, skinny, desert tapir… But they are not found near Egypt, so probably not!

The Sha is almost certainly a mammal. It has a thin dog-like body, a downwards-curving snout, and large angular ears. It is usually depicted with a forked tail, the fork is probably a simplified tuft of fur. It sometimes seems to have equine hooves, other times paws. It is normally black, but sometimes is reddish.  

The Set Animal’s curved head and forked tail are represented on the Was-sceptre, a staff symbolising power, which sometimes Anubis or Set are shown holding.

Next to nothing is known about the creature itself, but we do know about the god it represented. Set is the god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners. He is one of the oldest among the Egyptian pantheon, and started out as one of their top gods, later being vilified, likely because he originated from an earlier people’s religion. He is a brother of king Osiris and is the antagonist in many myths. He killed Osiris (who from then on ruled the gods from the afterlife), then attempted to steal the body from Anubis the god of embalming (mummification). Anubis caught Set and punished him multiple times, but Set kept on trying. So, finally, Anubis decided he’d had enough and he killed Set so that he was very dead (I shan’t go into the gruesome details of that). Set’s violent nature found a use in the afterlife, though: he protects the sun god Ra’s barge from the huge snake Apep (also called Apophis), who would otherwise swallow the sun.

External link:

The Sha on Wikipedia

Tsuchinoko

This animal is: from folklore, also a cryptid 

The Tsuchinoko is a reptile, with venomous fangs, a thick body and thin tail (I think it looks rather like a little snake who ate a big watermelon). They are said to grow to about 80cm long when adult. It is snake-like, but has eyelids, so is more like a limbless lizard (snakes do not have eyelids). They are described as being either entirely black or mottled browns and greens with a paler belly. 

The Tsuchinoko is a cryptid - a creature people have reportedly seen but we have no physical evidence of. The Japanese term for such creatures is UMA - Unidentified Mysterious Animal. With sightings reported from all over the country - except for Hokkaido and the Nansei Islands – the Tsuchinoko is one of Japan’s most famous UMAs, featuring in manga and video games. 

It is also a Yokai - a Japanese supernatural creature. It is reported in folklore, and also features in various encyclopaedias like Shinano Kishōroku from the 1800s.

The Tsuchinoko is said to live in fields. When they are young they prey on insects, as they grow bigger they take bigger prey, like frogs, and eventually they may eat things the size of cats. They also like to drink sake. They are sometimes reported to talk (and often lie) or make chirping bird-like sounds.

They are thought to usually wiggle along like inchworms, but when hunting can jump up to five metres. They also like to roll down slopes, either laying sideways, or holding their tail in their mouth to become a wheel shape. There are stories of them rolling down hills after people, sometimes tripping them up or biting their legs. But they aren’t usually considered that dangerous to people. 

The creature is known by many different names in different regions: nozuchi, bachihebi, tatekurikaeshi, tsuchihebi... The name used mostly is Tsuchinoko. 

‘Tsuchinoko’ (which is written 槌の子 in Kanji つちのこ in hiragana and ツチノコ in katakana), can be read to mean ‘child of the earth’, ‘small hammer’, or much more commonly ‘child of hammer’. This name refers to the creature’s shape, it looks like the head of a tsuchi (a tool that can be used as a hammer, mallet or pestle) lacking a handle.

The Tsuchinoko became popular in the 1970s, after the publication of a book by Yamamoto Soseki called Nigero Tsuchinoko that recorded his and other peoples’ sightings of the creature. Soon followed more sightings, blurry photos, supposed live captures, and appearances in anime and manga. This was known as the ‘Tsuchinoko boom’. 

Another such flurry of excitement occurred in the early 21st century when a farmer in a village in Okayama Prefecture found the remains of a Tsuchinoko-like creature. It got coverage in the news, and when a biologist examined the remains they said it was “probably a yamakagashi [Tiger Keelback snake, Rhabdophis tigrinus] but not a normal one.” 

External links:

This article was written with some information from The Book of Yokai by Michael Dylan Foster and Shinonome Kijin.

The Tsuchinoko on Yokai.com

The Tsuchinoko’s page on the Wikipedia (Japanese version) which has some pictures and a list of reported sightings. 

Velvet Worms

These animals are: real

Three species of velvet worms: Solórzano's velvet worm (the pink one), Eoperipatus totoro (the brown one), and the New Zealand Peripatus (the blue one).  

Velvet worms (Phylum Onychophora) are squishy, worm-like creatures. They are native to tropical and temperate places in the Southern Hemisphere, from Central and South America to parts of Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. They like dark damp habitats, like in amongst the moss and leaf litter of rainforests. They are mostly active at night, when they come out to hunt bugs. 

The two cute little nubs on their faces are tubes for squirting strings of very sticky saliva (rather like a Bug-Type Pokémon using string shot) at speeds of 3 to 5 metres per second. The glue sticks down their prey so it can’t escape. The velvet worm walks up to its stuck prey and chews a hole in the bug using its sharp ‘fangs’, which are usually concealed it its very cute little mouth. Then it injects saliva into its prey, making the unfortunate bug’s insides liquid, which the velvet worm eats up. Velvet worms also use their slime in self-defence, squirting it at a predator, so the worm can make its escape. 

Velvet worm claws are made of chitin (the same stuff as insect exoskeletons), and these claws are where they get their Latin name - Onychophora means ‘Claw-Bearers’. Velvet worms use their claws to grip when walking on uneven stuff, when on smoother surfaces they retract their claws and walk on their soft feet. Their ‘fangs’ are modified limbs, which is why the ‘fangs’ resemble the claws on their feet. 

At the base of each of the velvet worm’s antennae is a simple eye. The worm’s whole body is covered in little papillae (bumps). This gives them their velvety appearance and makes them water-repellent. The papillae have tiny hairs that are sensitive, they are used for touch and smell. 

Velvet worms have been around for a very long time, fossils we’ve found of them come from the Cambrian period, which was a long, long time before the dinosaurs!

Solórzano's velvet worm (Mongeperipatus solorzanoi) is one of the biggest velvet worms, growing to around 22 cm long. Other species are much smaller, they are about 5cm long on average (but some species are even smaller).

Eoperipatus totoro was named after the 1988 Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro. The first specimen was caught in 2007. The team that found it wanted to name it after Totoro because the velvet worm’s many-legged cuteness reminded them of the Catbus in the film. So far Eoperipatus totoro is the only velvet worm described (given a Latin name and officially recognised as a species) from Vietnam. The species can grow to be up to 6cm long.

The New Zealand Peripatus (Peripatoides novaezealandiae) gets its name from the word ‘peripatetic’ meaning ‘wandering’. The Māori name for velvet worm has a similar meaning – ngaokeoke comes from the word ‘ngaoki’ meaning ‘to crawl’. This particular species is about 10cm long (I can find no official measurement of how big they grow, I got that figure from looking at photos of them next to rulers). 

External links:

A short arcticle with a video of a velvet worm hunting and photos of Solórzano's velvet worm on The Wild Episode

An article about Eoperipatus totoro with cute pictures on Wired 

Lots of pictures of The New Zealand Peripatus on iNaturalist 

My illustration is available on a mug from Redbubble

Nurse Sally's Coronavirus Tips

Well, the coronavirus (or Covid-19, as the disease is properly known) has been in the news for a while now, and you’ve probably heard everyone (politicians, news reporters, doctors, random people, your pet hamster…) talking about it a lot.

Most people seem to be dealing with it by panicking, or buying an awful lot of toilet paper, or both… or just carrying on as usual and shrugging. None of these measures are particularly effective, so…

In this time of panic, woe (OK, maybe not so much woe for you kids off school) and no toilet paper, here’s Nurse Sally and Smiley Lemon with some positive words about how to stay safe:

Tip 1: Don’t touch your face (or anyone else’s, for that matter)

Tip 2: Wash your hands/paws/claws/whatever regularly.

Tip 3: Stay away from people!

Nurse Sally and Smiley Lemon feature in Welcome to the Dragon Café, by Kim Vertue and me. Click HERE to find out more about them. To read a free extract of the book, click HERE.

Stuck in Lockdown? You can find some fun free resources on the Red Sparrow website, or if you’re looking for something a bit longer to read, try part one of THIS. It’s an epic fairy-tale fantasy, which is currently available to read for free!

For more information about Covid-19, and what you can do about it, visit the BBC Newsround website.

 Stay safe, everyone!

All facts correct as of  3/6/2021. Information from New Scientist, BBC, and NHS. This was originally and eight-part cartoon, but as the everything has changed so quickly, and so many more discoveries about the virus have been made since I started making this cartoon the other parts are no longer relevant. 

Red Sparrow Writers at RSPB Conwy at Christmas!

On the first of December, Kim Vertue, Remy Dean and I will be back at the RSPB Conwy reserve, for their Christmas Fair!

We will have a stand in the Look Out, with cards greetings cards for sale, books available for purchase & signings, and the authors present for chats!

The Christmas Fair is 10am to 4pm.

It is free entry and there will be… marshmallows to toast, stalls to browse, Christmas crafts to make, pond dipping to be enjoyed, local wildlife to meet, authors and artists to see... and Santa to spot!

One of Jasmine's kids from the Dragon Café getting in the Christmas spirit...

Hope to see you there! We're sure Yule like it!

For more event information, and how to book a visit to Santa, see the RSPB’s website.

Red Sparrow Writers at RSPB Conwy

Join us for Halloween half-term fun on Tuesday the twenty-ninth of October, when Remy Dean, Kim Vertue and I will be at RSPB Conwy!

There will be a pop-up exhibition in the Look Out featuring illustrations by me and Remy. All three of us will be present for signings and chats, from 10:00am to 12:00pm. All are welcome. Prints and books will be available for purchase and signing.

Starting at 2 PM, there will be storytelling and fun activities, (see the RSPB’s website for booking details). Remy and Kim will read from their books, THIS, an epic fairy-tale fantasy, and Welcome to The Dragon Café, a magical, wacky story with Dragons and a talking lemon... and I will be hosting an illustration workshop, showing you how to draw characters from The Dragon Café.

Visit the Red Sparrow Press’s website for more details.

Hope to see you there! 

Sketch Page Sneak Peek

Here's a sketchbook page of colour tests and character concepts for a project I am working on...

illustration by Zel Cariad, © 2019

These four are the main characters in a weird, magical animal story set in the future, after the apocalypse...

Who knows when that'll get published...

welcome to my website

Hello. Info and fun stuff will happen here...