Saturday, July 23, 2005
Attack of the killer caterpillar
The world is simply stranger than we think.
Jax
A bizarre caterpillar has been caught red-handed in Hawaii using its silk in a spiderly fashion to ambush and devour snails. The shells are then left hanging around.
Jax
A bizarre caterpillar has been caught red-handed in Hawaii using its silk in a spiderly fashion to ambush and devour snails. The shells are then left hanging around.
Flesh-eating caterpillars are extremely rare, and always prefer to eat other insects — never snails, which are mollusks.
"It's kind of like finding a wolf that is diving for clams," said entomologist Daniel Rubinoff of the University of Hawaii.
Rubinoff and William Haines published their discovery in the July 22 issue of the journal Science.
(Link)
