Walking the pack this morning I came across some weird looking caterpillars feeding on a ragwort plant. I was surprised as ragwort is poisonous and I did not think anything would eat it.
After some research I found out that the caterpillars I saw were the youngsters of the Cinnabar Moth. They not only cope with ingesting the poison from the ragwort, that poison makes the caterpillar poisonous as well, quite a remarkable defence mechanism. They are also cannibals and when thy have run out of ragwort they eat each other. The ground I walk is maintained (though maintained is stretching it a bit) by the Council, so there is an abundance of ragwort! So these boys should have no problem getting large enough to crawl into the ground form a pupa and hatch next summer.
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