Butterflies and Caterpillars: Snakes in Disguise

Posted on June 15, 2010 with 1 Comment

Yesterday, the top story from the NY Times was about the study behind why caterpillars and butterflies disguise themselves as snakes.   From the sky and ground, when predators look at caterpillars, the first things they see are snake eyes glaring at them.  Since the predators are scared off most times, the camouflage is a great defense mechanism for caterpillars and butterflies.  It is reported that each day a bird will see tens to hundreds of caterpillars that they mistaken for snakes. A scientist, by the name of Dr. Janzen, studied specifically which caterpillars formed into which butterflies.  He studied in the rainforest in Costa Rice for 32 years to gather information.  In that time, he studied over 450,000 caterpillars! Still till this day there are researchers in Costa Rica and the findings they discover are remarkable.  Each caterpillar that they find is sampled to see the genetic coding and some caterpillars can have as many as 11 different ancestors!  Today, many researchers are still trying to perfect the answer to “Why does this small caterpillar look like a snake on one end?”

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