A BABY OF THE SKIPPER BUTTERFLY
(Eudamus tityrus, Fab.)
There is something fascinatingly strange to me in the babies of the winged butterflies, and I wonder why so many people have an aversion for them? Can there be an instinctive fear of anything that crawls, or is not this fear taught us by unthinking persons? The child is not afraid of the wide-mouthed naked little birds in the nest, or the little blind pink mice, and certainly they are no more innocent looking than the brilliant colored larva of the butterflies or moths.
What helpless things these babies are! They cannot fly, they cannot fight, they can barely see, and even their gait is a hobbled one.
Their business is to eat, and their jaws must keep busy pretty constantly to fill their stomachs with leaf fragments, for the greater part of the soft, flabby bodies is stomach. They are males and females but which they are you cannot tell until they turn into butterflies.
Along this creature’s sides, like portholes in an ocean liner, are the breathing pores, nine in number. Most animals which live on land take air in through a single opening into a great cavity through which the blood circulates and is purified, but the caterpillars, and all insects in fact, instead of circulating their blood in and out of a pair of lungs, have, running through their bodies, a labyrinth of air passages, all connected with the outside air by means of breathing pores.
This caterpillar’s eyes are poor affairs, and unless you look closely you will not find them, for they are merely a few raised spots, like blisters, beneath the skin on either side of its jaws.