July 5th, 2009
Another snake mimic
By KENNEDY WARNERon Rutowski, Professor of Biology at Arizona State University and a lepidopterist whose major area of study is how insects produce and use visual signals in their lives, has sent this link about the snake-mimicking spicebush swallowtail caterpillar. He notes: “Although the resemblance and its potential advantage appears obvious it has never been confirmed experimentally.”
Spicebush swallowtail larva looks more like something from Disney than nature.
So it mimics a snake to put off predators… how big a caterpillar are we talking? I don’t know if I could bring myself to worry about a snake that’s only a centimetre long. Not that I consider myself a particularly fearsome predator.
Maybe predators are hard-wired to avoid large eyes, regardless of the size of the critter sporting them. Perhaps it’s also combined with having bad-tasting flesh, so there’s a “Newsflash: You’re going to regret it if you eat me!” thing happening.