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This week's episode is about some invertebrates who look like they're made of velvet! Thanks to Rosy and Simon for their suggestions!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nRed Velvet Mite\n\nChigger Bites\n\nStructure and pigment make the eyed elater's eyespots black\n\nThe red velvet mite looks like a tiny red velvet cake but is NOT CAKE, NOT A SPIDER, NOT A SPIDER CAKE:\n\n \n\nGIANT RED VELVET MITE:\n\n\n\nRegular sized red velvet mites on a fingertip and one parasitizing a daddy long legs spider:\n\n \n\nAn eastern velvet ant female (it's actually a wasp, not an ant):\n\n\n\nVelvet worms on hands:\n\n \n\nA blue velvet worm!\n\n\n\nLook at its teeny mouf!\n\n\n\nAn eyed click beetle DO YOU SEE THE EYES(pots):\n\n\n\nThe velvet asity (maybe you notice that it's uh not an invertebrate):\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nAs we continue invertebrate August, we\u2019ve got a nicely themed episode this week, velvet invertebrates! Thanks to Simon and Rosy for their suggestions!\n\nFirst, let\u2019s talk about Rosy\u2019s suggestion, the red velvet mite. It sounds delicious, but only because it makes me think of red velvet cake. But the red velvet mite is an arachnid, related to spiders and scorpions--but it\u2019s not actually a spider.\n\nIn English, the word mite, spelled m-i-t-e, means a tiny thing, and mites are tiny. Most are under a millimeter long. Scientists actually group mites into two kinds, parasitic mites that are closely related to ticks, and velvet mites that are closely related to chiggers. Chiggers, my least favorite. All the many species of velvet mite and chigger are in the order Trombidiformes.\n\nYou know what? Let\u2019s talk briefly about chiggers, because there\u2019s a lot of bad information about them out there. The chigger lives in vegetation, especially tall weeds and shrubs. Various species live throughout the world but it\u2019s more common in warm, humid areas. In some places it\u2019s called a harvest mite or scrub-itch mite.\n\nThe chigger is only parasitic as a larva. The larvae only have six legs, compared to adults that have eight. A larva waits on a blade of grass or a leaf for an animal to brush past it, and when it does, the larva grabs on. The longer you stay in one place, for instance when you\u2019re blackberry picking, the more likely it is that a chigger will crawl onto you. It\u2019s very nearly microscopic so you can\u2019t look for chiggers and pick them off the way you can ticks. Like velvet mites, they\u2019re red in color but generally paler than actual velvet mites.\n\nA chigger bite causes intense itching, swelling, redness, and takes sometimes several weeks to heal, especially if you scratch it. It also gets infected easily. Many people believe that the chigger actually burrows into the skin. The chigger does eat skin cells from the layers of skin below the outer layer, but they don\u2019t actually have mouthparts that can bite that deeply. They certainly can\u2019t burrow into the skin. What they do instead is give the skin a little bite and inject digestive enzymes into the wound. The enzymes break down the skin cells they touch, and also harden the tissues around the wound. The chigger slurps up the liquefied skin cells and injects more enzymes, which seep down deeper into the skin, until basically what it\u2019s created is a tube of hardened skin cells that reaches the lower layers of skin. The tube is called a stylosome, in case you were wondering. All this takes several days, so the best way to treat chigger bites before they get bad is to take a hot shower as soon as possible after you\u2019ve been blackberry picking or whatever, and scrub well, especially around places where your clothing was tight. You also need to wash your clothes in hot, soapy water to kill any chiggers still on them.\n\nThe best way to deal with chiggers is to wear a good insect repellent and make sure to apply it all the way from your feet up, paying special attention to ankles, the backs of your knees,