Page 21 - Amazing Creations Volume Two

Amazing Creations 44

Richard Gunther

The monarch butterfly is poisonous.
The food plants its larva (caterpillers) eat are of the milkweed family,
which contain poisons, but the caterpillers are resistant, and also
gather some of the poison into their own body.
But there's more to it than this.
When the caterpillers start eating the poisonous leaves, they are
too weak to bite into the veins, where the poison lies.
But as they grow, their mandibles also grow, and they reach the
poison.
As soon as this happens they crawl to the stem.
Once there they deliberately pinch it, to cut off the circulation - (see
illustration) but not cut the stem right through.

Once the sap flow is stopped, the caterpiller goes back and
finishes off the leaf.

How does a caterpiller know about cutting off sap flow?
God, who made monarch butterflies, gave the larvae this wisdom.