Posted on 07/31/2005 5:51:47 PM PDT by furball4paws
A snail eating caterpillar is described. It hunts down snails, ties them down with silk and devours them.
"Such oddball lifestyles tend to develop in isolated ecosystems where there's a limited variety of creatures, as in Hawaii. "There's more room for evolutionary experimentation," says Gillespie. For example, Hawaiian insects evolved without ants as predators or competitors for food."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Our back yard is a certified National Wildlife Foundation habitat for butterflies/moths (not as hard to get as it might sound), and we raise caterpillars to help boost local populations (most species are on the decline because of habitat destruction). We've released over a hundred adult butterflies so far this year, and have about another hundred currently in the "pipeline". Keeping some of them from eating each other is part of the process. The Polydamas Swallowtails are especially bad in that regard -- we've lost over a dozen that way so far.
Now just *try* to get that song out of your head.
... They were on the sci-Fi Channel, last week; tue., wed., thur. 3:00am-5:00am I taped/erased them. LOL! Japanese B-films (1996ish). a real HOOT!
Interesting, but this guy is more of a predator.
How long would it take this snail to eat a whacky lib? Can we test it and find out, LMAO!
Yup. But I'm wondering if the one type of behavior might have evolved into the other.
OOOOOPs, read it wrong, can we test this caterpillar to see how long it would take to eat a lib/dem? LMAO!
But does it eat slugs? If so I want to start a small farm and raise these. They will sell GREAT here in the PNW.
How shall we begin to make our fortune?
Can we breed those caterpillars to devour lower life forms...like Democrats?
I also would like to be added to this list.
Wrong caterpillar...
I can't see how eliminating competition among your own would lead to being a predator on a different species. I think that most interesting is if there is some method to where the moth lays its eggs, say to increase the chances of finding a snail (doesn't say if any old snail will do or if only certain kinds are prey). As you know ichneumons lay their eggs directly in(on) their prey. That certainly means that some will be successful. Perhaps the reason is in the lack of insect predators in Hawaii, so they can be slow and allow for many "misses" and still be a successful species.
I like your ABOUT page. Very nice.
Ah yes, I was in Tbilisi a week after our President and loved it every bit as much as he apparently did.
So now I keep pics there to remind me that I can go back next year again.
Your dog is simply elegant, btw. Just asking for a kiss, I can tell.
On my street alone, I could become a millionaire. I just have to figure out how to eliminate the environmental danger of spreading Sevin on plants, balanced with the aggravation of buying slug pellets, balanced with the aggravation of spreading ash around the garden which blows away in an instant. And, I haven't tried the copper remedy yet, but it sounds expensive.
Must be something out there we haven't thought of yet, like this novel caterpillar which would do the work for us!
I have avoided this year, for the first time, planting any dahlias or un-established hostas in the flower gardens. The slugs WON after all these years....
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