The caterpillar is small, even more impressed as a tiny living creature that is vulnerable to prey to other predators. But if the caterpillar can survive and evolve, this small living thing will turn into a beautiful butterfly.
Eh but actually the caterpillar has a mechanism to survive and make the lazy predators to eat it. As reported by Live Science, caterpillars can make loud and noisy sounds when feeling threatened. Not shout like a human, but caterpillars will bang or shake one part of his body to make a strange and special sound.
The sound is also a kind of combination of parts of the body that are placed where the air will come out of the oral cavity, even though they do not have lungs. Yep, do not have lungs! It was also successful to make researchers at Carleton University, Ottawa tried to solve the mystery for many years on a reddish-brown worm.
To do so, the researchers took the butterfly's mother and raised her eggs in the laboratory. It's not easy, but when the caterpillars grow big, the researchers immediately make an experiment by putting a sensitive microphone around the caterpillar.
After that, they try to simulate the predator threat on the caterpillar with iron clasp so that the caterpillars make a sound to defend themselves. The result? Microphone proves that the source of loud noises around the mouth of the caterpillar that continues to open and like emitting a noisy sound.
Craig Merrett, who co-assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at Clarkson University and then tried to take the body of the caterpillar and study how the sound waves can be produced. Well pulled, from the existing model, the results show that the caterpillar can produce sound with the same frequency as turbulent airflow!
Yet researchers still have to try to solve the mystery of how caterpillars can push air out of its body despite not having lungs. But yes at least we know that these small and vulnerable living creatures have a gokil survival mechanism. Agree no?