Friday, October 26, 2007

Photosophize Discovery II - Beautiful One

I discovered leaves of my lime plant are chewed up and missing ! Something must be growing on the plant. Armed with my sharp eyes, I set out to look for the culprit.

Guess what I found? Caterpillars!

These leaf-eating machines are already in various stages of their life. Some are small in black and white colour; some are already grow so big and fat in green. I read somewhere that some species of caterpillars will disguise themselves to look like bird droppings so that they will not become bird snacks. Those that I find seem to fit into the categories. The bigger ones are armed with fake big eyes to scare off whatever predators.

A few of them have enough and already moved on to the next stage – Pupa. They will hang from a branch and wait for their “big break”. I do not want them on my plant to continue the destruction, but I could not bear to kill them. Thus, I collected them on a plastic container and selectively pick leaves for them to keep them alive.



Unfortunately, they start to climb everywhere, some ended up on our clothes and some even turn pupa in an umbrella! Finally, my mum could not stand them anymore. I was ordered to throw them away. I did however leave most of the pupae untouched. I am curious to see what sort of butterfly had been laying eggs on my plants. However, I kept missing them and end up finding a lot of empty pupae cases.

Then one morning, I saw this beautiful creature waiting for its wings to dry. . .


They seems to remember where they were born at and have since came back to lay their eggs again. OMG!

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