Caterpillars not just mindless leaf crunchers?

Paul from Levin

I've been forced to change my attitude towards caterpillars. They are not simply mindless leaf-crunching pests in my garden. Well, they are indeed leaf crunchers and pests in most cases. But I was photographing monarch caterpillars on one of my 5 swan plants, which as you can see, they have completely stripped of foliage. So they were munching on the the ends of the stems as in the 2nd photo. But one stem had 2 caterpillars one large one small, harmoniously chewing together. Another even larger one was purposefully aiming at the summit. When the top one became aware of the challenge it created an up-side-down U posture and butted the head of the challenger. They confronted each other head to head until the climber then did his own U-turn and retreated. Hah! I was surprised. The original two carried on chewing as if nothing had happened.

But that was not all. Two or three days later I twice found medium sized caterpillars about 20 metres (as the crow flies you might say) away from the stripped swan plant. They would have had to travel much further to get there as they are not yet able to fly. Fortunately I have a camouflaged swan plant to translocate them to as a reward for their perseverance and courage. I wonder if they will remember me in their next life?