When I was sitting on the porch outside the bed and breakfast where I was staying in the mountains of Las Terrenas, I spotted something with black and yellow stripes moving up the stem of a plant in the garden that was about 30 feet away.
I climbed down into the garden to get a closer look and I discovered that the mysterious black and yellow object I had spotted was a giant caterpillar.
Frangipani caterpillars feed on the poisonous sap from the Frangipani tree and in turn the caterpillars themselves become poisonous, which helps protect them from becoming delicious snacks for birds and other potential predators.
To avoid getting eaten, many types of caterpillars have bodies that camouflage with the plants where they live. The Rustic Sphinx caterpillar pictured below is an example of a caterpillar that uses camouflage to avoid being eaten.
The Frangipani Caterpillar is definitely not a master of camouflage! If the Rustic Sphinx and the Frangipani played hide and go seek, the Rustic Sphinx would win every time.
The Frangipani caterpillar is as fat as a Crayola Marker and it doesn't have any bones, so it would make for a very tasty snack for larger forest animals. Birds could spot it in the trees as they flew over, because it's colors are so bright. So why don't all the Frangipani caterpillars get eaten?
Instead of hiding from predators using camouflage, animals that use aposematism purposely stick out so that they are easy to spot. They are easy to spot, but instead of attracting predators, their colors scare predators away!
Animals with orange, black, yellow, and red patterns on their bodies are almost always poisonous or foul tasting. These firey colors work like a giant "caution" sign, warning other animals to watch out. When birds and other animals see the bright colors of a Frangipani caterpillar, poison dart frog, Monarch Butterfly, or a California Kingsnake, they know that the animal will either taste really bad or be poisonous and make them sick.
Can you think of any other animals that use Aposematic Coloration to scare away potential predators?