The world of insects is as interesting as, at times, gloomy.
if i talk to you about hats and caterpillars, no one in their right mind would be able to establish a union between both concepts. Previously, speaking of insects, we have already mentioned the figure of the zombie insect infected by a fungus that controls its brain, and we have even told you about photographs of insects taken with huge telephoto lenses, which will make you have nightmares. In this case, we assure you that you will hallucinate with reality of a hatwhich is only appearance.
A hat that hides the mystery of an almost unknown caterpillar
We want to introduce you to a somewhat special protagonist. Her scientific name is uraba lugens and lives in Australia and New Zealand, countries known for having a somewhat peculiar fauna. On this occasion, we are talking about a caterpillaras you can see in the Twitter post that we leave you under these lines, which presents a curious ‘hat’ on top of what would be his head. As if it were the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, the insect has a peculiar appearance and its secret is shocking: every time you make a changethe dead head overlaps to the new head.
You know what they say… many heads are better than one!
Each time the caterpillar of the gum leaf skeletonizer moth (Uraba lugens) moults, it carefully places the head of the exoskeleton beneath the others and wears them like a skull crown.#EarthCapture by Sunayana Rammohan pic.twitter.com/ht0egaycye
—Butterfly Conservation (@savebutterflies) October 31, 2022
Yes, you read it right. That hat that we were talking about, and that you have been able to see, is nothing more than the set of heads that have been passing through the body of this caterpillar, in a kind of tribute to its deceased organism. yes, you are heads they have one important mission for caterpillar survival: ward off potential predators. The insect is also known for its fondness for eucalyptus leaves, which allows it to end up metamorphosing into a moth.
In his phase of caterpillarit measures about 2 centimeters in length and can shed their exoskeletonaccording to information published on the CNET website, until 13 times before becoming the flying animal. It is curious to see that as the caterpillar sheds its body, the ‘hat’ of heads also grows in size, with each one being somewhat larger than the previous one.
It might seem that we are dealing with a specimen worthy of praise due to its curious skeleton, and it is, but it seems that the Australian and New Zealand farmers they don’t think the same. For them, this insect is a plagueas confirmed by the New Zealand organization Farm Forestry New Zealand, which lists the uraba lugens like an insect capable of devour the greenest part of the eucalyptus leafleaving only his ‘skeleton’.