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If you have any milkweed plants around, check them out and you may see one of these caterpillars. The female will lay her eggs only on milkweed which she identifies with taste organs on her feet. Larvae emerge at 2mm, .08inch in length, and eat so voraciously that in three weeks their length increases by a factor of 25, and their weight by a factor of 3000 (a human baby would be the size of a Blue Whale.) Since the skin doesn't grow the larvae sheds its' skin five times, immediately eating the old skin for protein. The period between each shedding is called an instar, with the later instars lasting longer than the earlier ones, usually 2 - 5 days per instar. If the larva is threatened by a predator it curls up and drops to the ground. Since the larvae is not good at finding a new milkweed plant (the only food it can eat) many starve to death after dropping off the plant. The caterpillar must actually be in contact with a plant before it can identify milkweed. Each larvae consumes approximately ten grams of milkweed by the final instar. Considering there are about 50 million larvae annually, that adds up to somewhere in the vicinity of 500 tons of milkweed consumed per year. After three weeks the caterpillar will climb to a high place and spin its' chrysalis preparing to become a butterfly. |