According to foreign media CNET, scientists recently found that a caterpillar called Uraba lugens will wear discarded exoskeletons on the head, like a hat, to protect themselves from predators. This unusual caterpillar is mainly found in Australia and New Zealand, and it wears its old molting head into a strange hat. This strange behavior gives it the nickname "Mad Hatter" because it is based on the "Mad Hatter" character from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
The piled-up head may sound like a dreaded fashion style, but it has an important purpose. "They use it to repel predators," photographer Alan Henderson told New Scientist on June 24. Thanks to Henderson's latest photo taken for Minibiast Wildlife, the Invertebrate Resource Centre in Queensland, Australia, the habit of the "Mad Hatter Caterpillar" has received a lot of attention online.
Another name for Uraba lugens is gum leaf skeletoniser because it eats a lot of eucalyptus leaves until their veins. This gives the caterpillar enough energy to eventually metamorphose into an adult.
The green and yellow caterpillar is about 0.8 inches (2 centimeters) long — in caterpillar form, its exoskeleton can molt up to 13 times before eventually spinning its cocoon. With each molt, the stack of its "skulls" gets higher. In addition, each of the bears is slightly larger than the previous one, because the caterpillar itself is also growing.
While the Uraba lugens caterpillar appears to be an interesting insect, many farmers in New Zealand and Australia consider it to be quite a pest. According to Agri-Forestry New Zealand and the New Zealand ForestRy Institute, this is because it often eats the leaves of eucalyptus and other plants.