One-shot Wednesday: Caterpillar

Taken in a tree in South Africa. Don’t know the name of it!

Caterpillars have been called “eating machines”, and eat leaves voraciously. Most species shed their skin four or five times as their bodies grow, and they eventually pupate into an adult form.[10] Caterpillars grow very quickly; for instance, a tobacco hornworm will increase its weight ten-thousandfold in less than twenty days. An adaptation that enables them to eat so much is a mechanism in a specialized midgut that quickly transports ions to the lumen (midgut cavity), to keep the potassium level higher in the midgut cavity than in the blood.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar

4 comments on “One-shot Wednesday: Caterpillar

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