Tuesday 13 October 2009

Brace Yourselves - It's a Carnivorous Butterfly

In a comment below yesterday's Global Cooling post, Gaw raises the spectre of a carnivorous butterfly. Well, read this affecting tale, and weep... Truly, there is no end to Nature's wonders - and horrors.

9 comments:

  1. Crumbs, they scalp the 'little fairies' too it seems. But then these are actually caterpillars rather than butterflies...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nature, red in sweet looks and little upturned noses.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Notice what the adult Harvester eats - aphid honeydew (fair enough), carrion, mud and dung. Our own Purple Emperor is partial to carrion an horse dung...

    ReplyDelete
  4. excellent - wooly aphids needed sorting out.

    also there's those really viscious bastards in hawaii

    http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/good-bad/eupethecia.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. So are we putting butterflies in the bad list, then?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Brit, in a word - NOOOO!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. My understanding is that some species of butterfly are darn poisonous because of the toxins they acquire from food plants while caterpillars. I wonder if butterflies are on the menu in some parts of the world?

    I guess the Bad List might contain a cross between a butterfly and a scorpion - colourful, absolutely beautiful, aggressive, airborne and - since it would be given to alighting on your arm - with a deadly sting in its tail.

    ReplyDelete