So, you have a teenager at home and you know how much they can eat. But, gram for gram, they just don't compare to caterpillars.
There are a lot of vegetarians in the natural world, so many that plants are under an all out assault most of the time. Consequently, many plants have adopted various defense mechanisms to protect themselves.
Common milkweed produces a sticky, milky white sap. The plant's latex contains large quantities of glycosides, which renders the leaves and seed pods toxic. Sheep and other large mammals cannot eat it, but there are several insects that have developed immunity to the milk of milkweed. The most famous of which is the monarch butterfly caterpillar. Like most caterpillars, they are little eating machines. They are incessant.
Some caterpillars eat as much as 27,000 times their body weight to support their lives as flying insects. I was a seven pound baby. That would be like me eating 94.5 tons of food my first few weeks of life, which I do not think I did. But I'd better ask my mother.
- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center
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A good to know post...'I was a seven pound baby. That would be like I ate 94.5 tons of food my first few weeks of life, which I do not think I did. But I'd better ask my mother.'.... It was damn funny.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aby.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed it. Mom was too little to have supplied that much nourishment.