Why does caterpillar eat a lot

The process is unbelievably complicated and is the product of millions of years of evolution. Basically, at the end of its eating time, when it's full-grown, the caterpillar sheds its skin for one last time, and this new version of the caterpillar has no arms or legs -- it's basically a pod. This is called a pupa, or a chrysalis. Inside the shell of this pod, the cells rearrange themselves into the form of the butterfly or moth. Then the insect sheds its skin one final time, and out comes the adult, a butterfly or moth with wings.

Caterpillars are one of four stages in the life of a butterfly or moth. They aren't exactly born -- they hatch out of eggs laid by the adult. The eggs are tiny and unremarkable, and the baby caterpillars are very small and defenseless. There are dozens and dozens of eggs laid by every adult, and most of the baby caterpillars are eaten by birds or ants long before they grow up.

The surviving baby caterpillars eat a lot, and grow fast. About 4 or 5 times during their life they will shed their skin as they outgrow the one they're in. Sometimes the new skin looks a lot different from the old one. When they're done eating they shed their skin again and become a pupa also called a chrysalis ; then that skin splits open and the butterfly comes out.

A cocoon is a protective coat or shelter that keeps the pupa inside it warm and dry, and also out of the reach of birds, ants, and parasites.

But a caterpillar will only spin a cocoon if it's a moth, not a butterfly. Butterflies don't spin cocoons, and most moths pupate underground. Only some moths make cocoons. A cocoon is made from a liquid that comes out of the caterpillar's mouth. When the liquid hits the air, it turns into a thread or fiber; this is the cateprillar's silk. There's a special organ in the caterpillar's "lip," labrum, called a spinneret.

This organ spools out the silk and the caterpillar builds the cocoon around itself. When it's time to hatch, the caterpillar produces a substance that dissolves one end of the cocoon, and the adult moth wriggles out. The most accurate answer to this question is, "When they're good and ready. Usually this takes several weeks from the time they hatch out of the egg laid by the adult. Caterpillars can make cocoons at all times of the year, but it is by far most common for them to pupate over the winter.

They eat and eat while leaves are out in the summer, spin a cocoon when it gets cold in the winter, and hatch out as an adult in the spring. Then the adults mate, lay eggs, and the process repeats all over again. There's some folklore out there that says the width of the bands on the banded woolly bear, Pyrrharctia isabella , predicts the severity of the coming winter, but there's no research to back this up. Banded woolly bear showing the red and black bands that do NOT predict winter weather Most caterpillars you find will turn into a moth, not a butterfly, because there are about a hundred times more moths than butterflies out there.

Caterpillars with "fur," or very large caterpillars with horns or other decorations, are almost always moth caterpillars. Butterfly caterpillars are generally smaller and slimmer than moth caterpillars, and are either smooth or have branched spines all over them.

These are only general rules, though. If you found a caterpillar and you want to know what it is, have a look at my Caterpillar Identification Guide. This is a good question. Whether a moth or a butterfly species, caterpillars eat a lot -- in fact, eating is their only purpose in life, since they're the phase in the cycle of metamorphosis change in form that is tasked with accumulating enough fat and calories to produce a big, beautiful adult.

But they don't eat all of the time. If you raise a caterpillar, you will notice that they eat at certain times of the day, and rest at other times. Many caterpillars eat at night, when the predators that want to eat them are unable to find them in the dark. Caterpillars live on their food plant, and they basically never leave. They eat and rest, eat and rest, and shed their skin molt when the skin they're in gets too tight.

Sometimes they come down to earth to prowl around for a good place to make a cocoon, and that's when most people find them. There are only a few caterpillars that eat milkweed, and this is because the milkweed plant has poisonous, milky sap that it uses to protect itself from things that eat its leaves.

But some insects have evolved to deal with the poison. 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. They start eating as soon as they are born and keep eating till the day they shut themselves in a capsule, later to be turned into a beautiful butterfly.

But why does the Caterpillar eat so much? Although they are only a few centimeters long , caterpillars are real eating machines. They can perforate the entire leaves of a plant from top to bottom in no time. The many plant foods provide small animals with the energy they need to transform themselves into butterflies.

They develop from the eggs, which the female butterflies usually cleverly lay on a forage plant of the respective species after mating. The young called a nymph usually look like small adults but without the wings. Butterflies, moths, beetles, flies and bees have complete metamorphosis. The young called a larva instead of a nymph is very different from the adults.

It also usually eats different types of food. There are four stages in the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Eggs are laid on plants by the adult female butterfly. These plants will then become the food for the hatching caterpillars. Eggs can be laid from spring, summer or fall. This depends on the species of butterfly. Females lay a lot of eggs at once so that at least some of them survive. The next stage is the larva.

This is also called a caterpillar if the insect is a butterfly or a moth. The job of the caterpillar is to eat and eat and eat. As the caterpillar grows it splits its skin and sheds it about 4 or 5 times. Food eaten at this time is stored and used later as an adult. Caterpillars can grow times their size during this stage.

For example, a monarch butterfly egg is the size of a pinhead and the caterpillar that hatches from this tiny egg isn't much bigger.