WASHINGTON — Even caterpillars shouldn’t take candy from strangers. Tasty little hairs growing on wild tobacco plants amount to “evil lollipops” that make caterpillars who eat them more likely to be eaten themselves, a researcher says.
Hawkmoth caterpillars (Manduca sexta) readily eat the hairs, reports Ian Baldwin of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany.
Log in
Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.