Maybe science has misunderstood the dining style of big monarch butterfly caterpillars. What insect watchers have called defense against the toxic latex a milkweed plant oozes may not be avoidance at all. Instead of dodging the plants’ sticky, white toxic goo, the plump, older caterpillars could be gorging on it.
Monarch caterpillars (Danaus plexippus) hatch and feed on milkweeds, which fight back when bitten and ooze milky toxin-rich latex. Monarchs evolved their own counter-chemistry for surviving the toxins. Yet that plant latex can still kill by sheer gooeyness, explains ecologist Georg Petschenka of University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. Very tiny, recently hatched caterpillars can get fatally stuck with
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