Kingdom Animalia

There were two specimens of Peripatus in the British Museum at an early date, one of which was in the collections of Sir Hans Sloane who had been in Jamaica in the later 17th century. It has been concluded however that that specimen was actually found in Dominica in the 18th century, not in Jamaica in the 17th.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Peripatus was named around 1825 by the Rev Lansdown Guilding who lived for many years in St Vincent, and studied the flora and fauna of the island. He found the strange creature quite by chance among plants he was collecting, and thought it was a kind of slug. The little animal turned out eventually to be something very different.

                                                             

Botanical Garden in St Vincent

500 million years of evolution: velvet worms, the first walking animals (Onychophora) By JuliánMonge-Nájera Centro de Investigación General, UNED,Apartado 474-2050, San José, Costa Rica. Velvet worms originated in the Cambrian seas, and apparently were the first animals that walked. Today, they are only found in terrestrial habitats, and are so rare that most humans will never see them. Even the majority of professional biologists only know them as preserved slices in microscope slides.

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Philip Henry Gosse, the naturalist, visited Jamaica from 1844 to 1846. He spent most of that time at Bluefields House and carried on his researches in that part of Westmoreland. He is chiefly remembered for his study of Jamaican birds, but he also found and recorded the first known specimens of peripatus in Jamaica.                
He was not certain how to classify them - as worms or as molluscs, and noted that they were not plentiful. Three of his specimens went to the British Museum, but unfortunately shrivelled up because of the way they  were preserved.                                                                                                   Bluefields House
more on Gosse >>>

 

nature 46, 514-514 (29 September 1892)

Peripatus Re-discovered in Jamaica

M. GRABHAM &  T. D. A. COCKERELL

                    Bath, St Thomas

MRS. E. M. SWAINSON has been so fortunate as to find on Beacon Hill, near Bath, three specimens of Peripatus, which she has sent to the Institute of Jamaica. The species is doubtless identical with that found by Gosse many years ago at the other end of the island. Of the two specimens which we have studied, one has 36 pairs of legs, and is dark pinkish-brown, with the ends of the antennæ pure white, in striking contrast; the other is smaller and darker, without white ends to the antennæ, and with only 29 pairs of legs. The third example, which we have still alive, is larger, but dark in colour. Full details will be given elsewhere later on, and it may suffice for the present to state that the species is very closely allied to P. Edwardsii from Venezuela, as described by Sedgwick, but differs in the greater number of legs and the white-tipped antennæ of certain individuals (probably the females), in the only slightly curved (not hooked) claws, in the differentiation of the papillæ into two distinct kinds on the dorsal surface, and apparently in other minor matters. There is no dark dorsal line. The genital orifice is between the penultimate pair of legs; and the jaws are almost precisely as in Edwardsii. The Jamaican species being evidently new, it is proposed to call it Peripatus jamaicensis.

 

I have just found this photo of a Jamaican peripatus, courtesy of the Tody News TODY NEWS Newsletter of the Jamaica Conservation & Development Trust/Green Jamaica September 2006 Volume 13, No. 2 Peripatus Found Scientists believe that this creature is the evolutionary link between annelid worms and arthropods. Also known as Velvet worms or Walking worms, this significant find was made at Whitfield Hall (St. Thomas), and the specimen was deposited at the Institute of Jamaica. This animal is rarely collected as it is very secretive and difficult to find.

[I have not found a photograph of a Jamaican peripatus; when I do I will put it on the page.

See the item above - I found one!]

This is a peripatus or 'velvet worm' from somewhere else, but it gives an idea of the size and appearance of these strange little creatures.

where Peripatus has been found in Jamaica

from Psyche [December 1936]                

adult female Peripatus Jamaicensis

Two drawings of the Peripatus Jamaicensis taken from an article by M. Grabham in the Journal of the Institute of Jamaica, Vol 1, 1891-3, p 219 outline drawing of adult female, walking

I need to find some more up-to-date information on peripatus, but I haven't had much luck in that direction so far. I also need more information on indigenous bees!

the worthy frog