They are tough, they contain very little protein and they sometimes contain nasty chemicals. However, the first insects that were able to survive off a diet of just leaves had this food almost entirely to themselves, and they became quite successful.
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This page was last modified , 12 April by Bilal Bush. Based on work by Ronda Koski and Melissa and others. The most famous of these is the monarch butterfly, scientific name Danaus plexippus. The brightly striped caterpillar of the monarch butterfly eats only milkweed. Sometimes the caterpillar will chew through the main vein of a leaf so there's not as much toxic sap in the part it wants to eat -- apparently evolution is not completely through! There is another kind of caterpillar that eats milkweed.
It's a brightly colored, furry orange and black species that turns into a pretty grey moth -- the milkweed tiger moth. There's only one kind of caterpillar that turns into the monarch butterfly, one of the most beautiful and recognizable of all North American insects. The caterpillar of the monarch eats only milkweed species, and the toxic sap from the milkweed is thought to make the caterpillar and butterfly taste bad to predators.
There are a few caterpillars that eat rose, and a couple of the most common ones also sting -- unusual in the caterpillar world. One of them is the io moth, a beautiful species. The caterpillar is green with a red and white line down its side and lots of sharp branched spines. Touch these, and you'll think you've been stung by a bee! The other is known as the "stinging rose caterpillar.
Caterpillars, like all insects, have an exoskeleton. This means that they have no inner support; it's all supplied by a tough but flexible outer shell. When the insect eats, it grows, and the exoskeleton gets tight. In order to get bigger, the insect has to wriggle out of its old skin to reveal a new one underneath.
This new skin is flexible enough to allow the caterpillar to grow larger -- until it reaches the end of the exoskeleton's flexibility, and needs to shed again. At the end of the metamorphosis process, the adult moth or butterfly emerges, and of course it too has an exoskeleton. Leaving aside the fact that judgements like "bad" and "good" don't apply to caterpillars, which are insentient beings with no moral code, it's true that there are some that are more of a pain to humans than others.
Gypsy moth caterpillars, for example, eat a wide variety of trees and can occur in huge numbers, enough to destroy an entire forest. Cabbage white butterfly caterpillars are another persistent pest, on garden plants. There are very few butterfly pest species -- most of them are moths. No caterpillars are disease vectors, or any real kind of threat to humans. In a way, they're all "good"! Look at it this way: Every feature on a caterpillar, from color to shape to "decorations," have evolved over millions of years to help the animal survive and avoid predators.
Being hairy is a common strategy among caterpillars more commonly moth species than butterfly species for a number of reasons. One of them is to make it hard for little parasitic wasps and flies to land on the caterpillar and lay their eggs.
Another is to make the caterpillar a nasty mouth-full for birds, lizards, and other predators. This green caterpillar is perfectly camouflaged on its food plant. The answer to this question goes to a basic need of almost all caterpillars: the need to not be seen by predators. Since they live on plants and eat leaves, caterpillars live in a world of green. It gives them an advantage, from an evolutionary point of view, to blend in with their surroundings.
Caterpillars, then, are green because if they were bright orange or blue, predators would have no trouble finding them on their food plant. Surprisingly, the answer is "yes. One theory is that they have evolved to limit their own populations when resources are scarce.
Eating the surplus population cuts down on competition and provides the survivors with a tasty, nutritious lunch. One of these species is the cinnabar moth, a beautiful insect that you would never suspect is capable of eating its fellow-caterpillar. Another is the zebra swallowtail butterfly, also a beautiful species. The answer here here is "yes," but only if it's a species that already eats lettuce. Both moth and butterfly caterpillars can be very picky about the leaves they eat, and very few will actually eat lettuce that you buy at the grocery store.
If you found a cateprillar and want to feed it, try a handful of every plant and leaf from the vicinity where you found it. There's a chance that it will eat one of these. Not usually. The vast majority of caterpillars stay in their trees and plants and eat a few leaves without bothering anybody. Once in a while, a few species can get out of hand and due real damage to your garden plants. If this happens, I suggest using diatomaceous earth, which is a completely natural and non-toxic way of controlling insect pests.
Gypsy moth caterpillars can defoliate entire trees. Very few caterpillars eat aphids. The only common species is a butterfly called the harvester, a very pretty orange-and-black butterfly about an inch across.
The caterpillars live on plants where there are aphids, and eat them. This is an excellent source of protein, and the caterpillars grow very quickly. Ladybugs, on the other hand, are voracious aphid-eaters. There is a kind of moth that lives in Hawaii that has evolved to be a predator.
It has sharp legs and snatches up flies and other unsuspecting insects. It's one of the more amazing caterpillars on the planet. Are the caterpillars in your garden toxic?
Do they sting? Will they seriously damage your plants? The answers are in this easy and authoritative guide to garden caterpillars. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products.
List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Debbie Hadley. Entomology Expert. Debbie Hadley is a science educator with 25 years of experience who has written on science topics for over a decade. Updated January 18, Butterfly Caterpillar Host Plants American painted lady pearly everlasting American snout hackberry black swallowtail dill, fennel, carrot, parsley cabbage whites mustards checkered whites mustards common buckeye snapdragons, monkey flowers eastern comma elm, willow, hackberry emperors hackberry giant swallowtail lime, lemon, hoptree, prickly ash grass skippers little bluestem, panic grass greater fritillaries violets gulf fritillary passion vines heliconians passion vines monarch butterfly milkweeds mourning cloak willow, birch painted lady thistles palamedes swallowtail red bay pearl crescent asters pipevine swallowtail pipevines question mark elm, willow, hackberry red admiral nettles red spotted purple cherry, poplar, birch silver-spotted skipper black locust, indigo spicebush swallowtail spicebush, sassafras sulphurs clovers, alfalfa tiger swallowtail black cherry, tulip tree, sweet bay, aspen, ash viceroy willow zebra swallowtail pawpaws.
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