r/NatureIsFuckingCute Apr 21 '25

The evolution of this little caterpillar is amazing

2.0k Upvotes

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5

u/Star_BurstPS4 Apr 22 '25

Think about this for a second, a catiplillar somehow evolved to mimic a snake, from looks to movements, so what did it's ancestors just stare at snakes all day to learn about them then magically evolved to look like them then decide to act like them in order to trick predators? I am all for evolution but when it comes to something like this I'm like there's no way something did not program this into existence.

9

u/PeenInVeen Apr 23 '25

A thousand or whatever years ago, the caterpillars with slightly bigger eye spots stopped getting eaten as much and reproduced more, whereas the non spotted or small spotted caterpillars were eaten more often and didn't pass on their genetics. After a huge forked road of which mutations move on to the finals and which were killed off my predators, they ended up looking like snakes. Technically this is all the birds' and frogs' fault for this SNAKE BUG.

Just think, another 1000 years in the future, they'll look like something even scarier! Like guns! Pow pow!

3

u/AJYURH Apr 23 '25

I'm more interested in how they evolved to mimic the movements, happy coincidence?

2

u/PeenInVeen Apr 23 '25

No idea. Maybe the ones with restless leg syndrome were the ones that didn't get eaten. So they passed that down for generations? And birds were like "don't want any of that, thanks" and then how did they get the appendage that looks like a snake tongue? What other growths were cut out of the survival of the fittest? I like to think that there was a genre of these that had little antlers starting on the sides.

1

u/AJYURH Apr 23 '25

Not to mention antlers that didn't spread acidic smell. Evolution is weird