Imagine you are a freshly hatched butterfly caterpillar. You are crawling around on your host plant, nibbling away at the leaves and growing big and strong. One day, there are no more leaves to eat. Oh no! You try to look around, but you’re a caterpillar, and you can’t see so good. Instead, you crawl down the stem, searching for more leaves. You nibble as you go, taste testing what you come across. You are so hungry! You nibble more and find something juicy, more juicy than you might expect, but it tastes like leaves! Hooray! You gobble it all up with your little caterpillar mouthparts.
That was a close one!
Bonus Fun Fact: Butterfly caterpillars often resort to cannibalism when faced with starvation. Because caterpillars often feed on the leaves of specific plants, the caterpillar themselves often taste like the plant they feed on (because of all the juices and whatnot). When one caterpillar is happened on by another, hungrier caterpillar, sometimes they are mistakenly consumed. Is it really cannibalism if you didn’t realize it?
Jason E. Andersen 
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