I recently took a children’s nature club out on a nature walk, and told them to show me any creatures they could find and almost all of them found caterpillars.
Did you know that caterpillars are the young ones of moths or butterflies? You have read about the life cycle butterflies in your school. Eggs laid by
moths or butterflies, hatch, and from them emerge caterpillars. After growing, these caterpillars turn into a cocoon or chrysalis from which emerges the moth or butterfly.
Caterpillars come in all shapes and sizes. And as they eat leaves to fatten themselves up, they use every trick in the book to get away from birds and other creatures that will try to gobble them up.
One of the tricks that they use, which is my favourite, is used by the Green Coat Moth caterpillar. This caterpillar feeds on leaves of jamun trees. Often, in the right season, if you go below a jamun tree, you may find some of these caterpillars fallen on the ground.
Whenever I see brightly coloured spiny, caterpillars like this one, I know its time to check out the ‘itch value’! I touch the caterpillar, and if it really, really itches, I know it has a high ‘itch value’! ‘Itch value’ (IV) is just a term that I have made up, but it refers to how much itching the caterpillars spines cause!
Now the Green Coat Moth caterpillar, as I found out when I touched it, has a really high IV! Do you know why this happens? Caterpillars use the itchy spines to protect themselves. When a bird or lizard tries to eat the caterpillar, it gets stung by the spines and leaves the caterpillar alone.
Now that the predator of the caterpillar knows that it is not nice to eat, the caterpillar advertises this fact by having bright shiny colours. The Green Coat Moth caterpillar makes a cocoon that looks like a small igloo on tree trunks.
After a few weeks, emerges a lovely, beautiful moth, with green wings, giving it its common name — the Green Coat Moth.
This is a good season to find these caterpillars. So find a jamun tree, search out these caterpillars and check out their IV for yourselves!
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