The Ultimate Caterpillar Quiz

As soon as it hatches, a caterpillar eats its eggshell. Then it devours the plant it is standing on.

The corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea) eats tobacco plants. Lucky for it, it has an enzyme in its saliva for breaking down the nicotine in the plant, which would otherwise be toxic.

Caterpillars, moths and butterflies have three main parts to their body: a head, a thorax and an abdomen.

A butterfly's body is adapted for finding a mate and reproducing. A caterpillar's is designed to turn food into fuel and store it.

A caterpillar starts off its life as a speckled egg and ends it as a chrysalis about to transform into a butterfly.

A caterpillar molts five times. The stage between each molt is called an instars.

When a caterpillar forms a chrysalis, it pupates or undergoes a metamorphosis.

A caterpillar has six legs, as well as pairs of prolegs, which help it to move around. Because the prolegs don't have segments or joints, they are not real legs.

The geometer moth does not have prolegs, so it moves in arches, using the legs at the front and back of its body. Caterpillars with prolegs crawl.

A caterpillar has holes along the length of its body, called spiracles, which let it breathe. Its hairs and quills, called setae, are used to deter predators.

Caterpillars have spinnerets at the top of their heads, which produce silk.

The Liphyra brassolis is a carnivore. The butterfly lays its eggs in ant hills and then the caterpillars eat the ants and their larva.

The silver-spotted skipper, the Epargyreus clarus, turns its waste into missiles and launches them away from itself, to prevent prey from tracking it down.

Solitary caterpillars spin silk to act as a rope and harness, so that if they fall of a leaf, the silk net will catch them.

Gregarious caterpillars, caterpillars that live in groups, spin silk sheets and use them as a shelter, a nest and as trellises to help them move around the trees.

A disadvantage of being a gregarious caterpillar is that you have to compete with your siblings for food. A further disadvantage is that you are at risk of infection for contagious diseases.

Some caterpillars form a silk pad on the underside of a leaf and attach themselves to it via a silk hook, called a cremaster. Others form a silk hammock to support themselves.

Inside the chrysalis, a caterpillar breaks itself down into imaginal cells, which are undifferentiated cells that can become any type of cell.

A caterpillar's process of complete metamorphosis from larva to chrysalis to butterfly is called holometabolism. Most caterpillars take about two weeks to go through this process; for some it can take months.

Silkworms have lost the ability to survive without human intervention. Today, they feed on mulberry leaves before spinning silk.