The Life of the Caterpillar

by Jean-Henri Fabre

After the hatching, the scaly cylinder is as regular and as fresh in appearance as if it were still inhabited. We do not perceive that it is deserted until we raise the spangles. The eggs, still arranged in regular rows, are now so many yawning goblets of a slightly translucent white; they lack the cap-shaped lid, which has been rent and destroyed by the new-born grubs.

The puny creatures measure a millimetre[5] at most in length. Devoid as yet of the bright red that will soon be their adornment, they are pale-yellow, bristling with hairs, some shortish and black, others rather longer and white. The head, of a glossy black, is big [[23]]in proportion. Its diameter is twice that of the body. This exaggerated size of the head implies a corresponding strength of jaw, capable of attacking tough food from the start. A huge head, stoutly clad in horn, is the predominant feature of the budding caterpillar.

These macrocephalous ones are, as we see, well-armed against the hardness of the pine-needles, so well-armed in fact that the meal begins almost immediately. After roaming for a few moments at random among the scales of the common cradle, most of the young caterpillars make for the double leaf that served as an axis for the native cylinder and spread themselves over it at length. Others go to the adjacent leaves. Here as well as there they fall to; and the gnawed leaf is hollowed into faint and very narrow grooves, bounded by the veins, which are left intact.

From time to time, three or four who have eaten their fill fall into line and walk in step, but soon separate, each going his own way. This is practice for the coming processions. If I disturb them ever so little, they sway the front half of their bodies and wag their [[24]]heads with a jerky movement similar to the action of an intermittent spring.

But the sun reaches the corner of the window where the careful rearing is in progress. Then, sufficiently refreshed, the little family retreats to its native soil, the base of the double leaf, gathers into an irregular group and begins to spin. Its work is a gauze globule of extreme delicacy, supported on some of the neighbouring leaves. Under this tent, a very wide-meshed net, a siesta is taken during the hottest and brightest part of the day. In the afternoon, when the sun has gone from the window, the flock leaves its shelter, disperses around, sometimes forming a little procession within a radius of an inch, and starts browsing again.

Thus the very moment of hatching proclaims talents which age will develop without adding to their number. In less than an hour from the bursting of the egg, the caterpillar is both a processionary and a spinner. He also flees the light when taking refreshment. We shall soon find him visiting his grazing-grounds only at night.

The spinner is very feeble, but so active that in twenty-four hours the silken globe attains [[25]]the bulk of a hazel-nut and in a couple of weeks that of an apple. Nevertheless, it is not the nucleus of the great establishment in which the winter is to be spent. It is a provisional shelter, very light and inexpensive in materials. The mildness of the season makes anything else unnecessary. The young caterpillars freely gnaw the logs, the poles between which the threads are stretched, that is to say, the leaves contained within the silken tent. Their house supplies them at the same time with board and lodging. This excellent arrangement saves them from having to go out, a dangerous proceeding at their age. For these puny ones, the hammock is also the larder.

Nibbled down to their veins, the supporting leaves wither and easily come unfastened from the branches; and the silken globe becomes a hovel that crumbles with the first gust of wind. The family then moves on and goes elsewhere to erect a new tent, lasting no longer than the first. Even so does the Arab move on, as the pastures around his camel-hide dwelling become exhausted. These temporary establishments are renewed several times over, always at greater heights than the last, so much so that the tribe, which was hatched on [[26]]the lower branches trailing on the ground, gradually reaches the higher boughs and sometimes the very summit of the pine-tree.

In a few weeks’ time, a first moult replaces the humble fleece of the start, which is pale-coloured, shaggy and ugly, by another which lacks neither richness nor elegance. On the dorsal surface, the various segments, excepting the first three, are adorned with a mosaic of six little bare patches, of a bright red, which stand out a little above the dark background of the skin. Two, the largest, are in front, two behind and one, almost dot-shaped, on either side of the quadrilateral. The whole is surrounded by a palisade of scarlet bristles, divergent and lying almost flat. The other hairs, those of the belly and sides, are longer and whitish.

In the centre of this crimson marquetry stand two clusters of very short bristles, gathered into flattened tufts which gleam in the sun like specks of gold. The length of the caterpillar is now about two centimetres[6] and his width three or four millimetres.[7] Such is the costume of middle age, which, like the earlier one, was unknown to Réaumur. [[27]]