This Caterpillar Uses A Stack Of Discarded Heads To Fend Off Predators

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

It uses this stack of "skulls" as a sword and a decoy. Donald Hobern/Wikimedia Commons; CC BY 2.0

Fashion trends can sometimes spawn some fairly questionable items of clothing, but none can be as strange as that worn by a very peculiar caterpillar. This little critter is called the gum leaf skeletoniser, and it crawls around with a stack of old "skulls" on its head. The question, of course, is why? As a new study in PeerJ reveals, this grim head ornamentation is used to fend off predators.