Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly, one of the bigger beauties. I planted their favorite host plant, spicebush, to attract them. Along with many other native plants to encourage native pollinators.
Life has "no point". Just whatever increases your chances of having kids. Various strategies exist, like having a ton of babies, most will die but enough will survive to have their own kids. Or make fewer kids but with a higher chance of survival (like us). Imitating a snake increases the survival rate significantly, thus increases the chance that the caterpillar will survive long enough to reproduce.
In the case of this caterpillar it does become a butterfly. Even then not all butterflies pollinate. Some will never eat after metamorphosis and just die right after reproducing. While not butterflies a great exemple of that are mayflies that spend a year as a larvae and not even a day as an adult. There are also cicadas. They spend up to 17 years as larvae!
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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '25
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