Thursday, September 1, 2022

David Weiller, Insect Camouflage



And below, a caterpillar that carries its own fake leaf around. All from YouTube.



1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

"And below, a caterpillar that carries its own fake leaf around."

The way this was phrased confused me, so I clicked through to make sense of it.

It's not a "fake leaf" - these creatures are bagworms, which use silk to create "casings" for themselves out of environmental flotsam, usually small bits of plants (often somewhat woody bits), with a great variety in what is used depending on species and environment. This particular bagworm builds a casing out of (quite real) dead leaves.

"Fake leaves" would be more appropriate to refer to stick bugs and other phasmids, where the body of the insect itself is adapted to be leaf shaped and colored, but is not in fact an actual leaf.