Dinner time!! TW BUGS INSECTSA little while ago I kept seeing a Cabbage Butterfly fluttering aroun

Dinner time!! TW BUGS INSECTS A little while ago I kept seeing a Cabbage Butterfly fluttering around the potted plants and vegetables we have on the deck, and I said it’s probably laying eggs. Sure enough, I went to water and saw a bright green caterpillar wiggling around on my mustard plant! A perfect snack for Motaro (L8, F, Tenodera sinensis). ((Also pictured: the unfertilized ootheca he laid a while ago…)) I was curious so I had to look something up, and thought I’d share it here. It’s pretty common knowledge that many caterpillars are poisonous due to eating poisonous plants like milkweed - that’s why some are brightly coloured with stripes. This is a deterrent to predation by other species… except praying mantids. Mantids will instinctively eat the caterpillar, and then discard the innards that contain poisonous plant matter, so they minimize the amount of toxins they ingest. Even still, some toxins are still present and absorbed into the rest of the caterpillar’s body, but produce no adverse effects on a mantis. One study concluded that a varied diet (that included poisonous caterpillars) was ultimately more healthy for the mantises they studied. I don’t think cabbage butterfly caterpillars are necessarily poisonous, but I’ve definitely seen my babies discard the stomachs of their large prey when I watched them. Pretty cool to see how smart they actually are, as far as insect intelligence goes. #mantis #mantises #mantids #prayingmantis #preyingmantis #chinesemantis #tenoderasinensis #mantidsofinstagram #bug #bugs #insect #insects #insectkeeping #insectpets #bugkeeping #pet #pets #petstagram #insectfeeding #ootheca #caterpillar https://www.instagram.com/p/CWCVENOvRe8/?utm_medium=tumblr -- source link

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