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 Anyone who has been working in the soil or weeding has certainly noticed the velvet mite. Bright red and moves quickly on the black soil – impossible to miss.

 

The body is a single segment, covered with velvety hairs; length up to three millimetres. Eight legs and two pairs of mandibles. They live hidden in the soil surface. We have to do with tiny predators:  they hunt even smaller beings and those that they can overpower, for instance small arthropods or their eggs.