Behold the mighty poopipillar! 💩🐛

This little pile of bird poop is not, in fact, a little pile of bird poop… but a caterpillar.

It’s a baby Giant Swallowtail butterfly. Giant Swallowtails are those elegant black and yellow beauties you see flapping around the garden, soaking up summer rays and supping on flowers. But talk about an ugly duckling start. Evolution was all like “Hey, I have an idea!! You know how birds like to eat you? You know what we could make you look like that they don’t want to eat…??”

It’s not actually called the poopipillar of course. Though obvs it should be.

And that’s not all. The poopipillar also has something called an “osmeterium”. I recommend giving it a google, but basically an osmeterium is an organ it can shove out of its body when threatened that looks like a forked snake tongue. So it looks like bird poop but also bird poop that is somehow also a snake?? I know that’s real low on the list of things that sound delicious to me. Well played Giant Swallowtail, well played.

Nature is so wild. Have a great long weekend folks! 💚