365 / 40: Sting

So, remember how I mentioned in yesterday's photo that I'm a huge fan of passion flowers/passion vines/passion fruit? Well, one aspect of growing passiflora is the fact that several species of butterfly lay their eggs on it, and their larvae eat the passion vines as their only food source. Passiflora generate a natural form of cyanide in their foliage as a protection against being eaten, but these caterpillars have evolved to absorb that poison and use it as a defense mechanism to prevent them from being eaten. They've got little black spines all over their orange bodies to drive the point home. Normally, they're harmless. Just brushing or touching one isn't harmful (unlike bushing an asp/puss caterpillar, which is excruciating). However, if you happen to bump into a fritillary caterpillar with any force, and those spines are actually jammed into the skin, well, the effect is not pleasant. This is my leg today, after an encounter with a caterpillar two days ago. You can still make out the puncture marks where the individual spines impaled me. So let me serve as a lesson to you: Don't try this at home!

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF 100mm 2.8 macro

Lisa On Location Photography

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