Check this out!
As I was picking the grapes this morning I got quite a fright. A long green insect with two big eyes was staring at me. Momentarily I didn't know what it was and dropped the bunch of grapes quickly into the box.
After a while it started to move about and it looked more like a mini elephant trunk as it felt its way about the stems. Nature is very adaptive and looking scary is definitely a good defence strategy if you are slow and soft and just the right size for most birds to enjoy. I do find it remarkable how a whole species can develop these advantages. To look the same are all of these caterpillars descended from each single mutation that gave it an improved chance of survival or does living in the same habitat mean all of these insects develop the same strategy over time? I don't know but I am quite happy to just marvel over the surprise and the chance to stop and look closely at a small piece in the evolutionary jigsaw.
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