 Good morning, John. It's Friday. You know how caterpillars become butterflies? Well, that is a lot. Any given caterpillar you spot hunking its way down the sidewalk, there's a 90% chance that that fresh little wiggler is incapable of becoming a butterfly, and instead, it will become a moth. And John, moths! Oh my God, they're so good! What precisely is a moth, you ask? Well, here's where it gets a little bit messed up, because butterflies are a thing. They're like all, they have a single common ancestor. Moths are just anything that's not a butterfly. Any scale-winged thing that isn't a butterfly, moth. Is it more closely related to some butterflies than it is to some moths? Doesn't matter, moth! And talk about a branding problem, right? Butterfly is this beautiful word. It spoonerizes to flutter by. And then moth. Sounds like the noise you make when a moth flies into your mouth. But moths, moths, moths, moths, moths. We're stuck with the name. Let's just look at these beautiful creatures. And then what I want to talk to you about today is mostly the regal moth. Why? Because of its caterpillar, the hickory horned devil. Which looks like this? You will never forget this caterpillar, or probably its name, because it has got brand power. Brand too strong. Now there are other horned devils out there. This is the largest of the horned devils. It's from South America. But the hickory with its blue body and its red horns, why does it look this way? Well, because it's basically a hot dog with legs, it's very good eating. It looks fierce, but it's not. It can't sting, it can't bite, it's not venomous, it's not poisonous, but it's too big to hide from raccoons and possums. So it's got to make those fuzzy folk worry about their noses and toesies before grabbing on and taking a bite. But lots of caterpillars don't become gigantic food bags. In fact, the hickory horned devil is the largest caterpillar in the US. So why is it so big? Because the hickory horned devil has to consume massive amounts of food because Saturnian moths, which is this is one of, it's like over a thousand species of these guys, do not have mouths once they become moths. Once a Saturnian caterpillar pupates, it will never eat again. And so these caterpillars eat two to three times their own body weight in leaves every day, growing in size over a thousand times in the course of a month. They don't even digest the cellulose of these plants. Instead, they basically juice the leaves in their guts. This time lapse footage, by the way, is from John the butterfly farmer and his channel is amazing. There will be a link in the end screen and the description. The males emerge from their chrysalis. They fly, sometimes for miles, trying to sniff out a female with their extremely sensitive feathery antenna. Their job is to locate the female because the female's job is to use all of its energy, creating hundreds of very large eggs. The female regal moth does not fly until it mates. And if it does not mate, it never flies. It just dies waiting. They have to mate and lay their eggs within the seven days they have to live in their adult forms. The strategy of regal moths and other Saturniade is that the moth phase exists only for meeting and breeding. And to pull that off, the caterpillar needs to be successful in storing fats and proteins before it pupates. And so, it has to get big and full of nutrients, which makes it a perfect snack, so it has to look ridiculously fierce. Pretty much anything would see this juicy boy and think that is not worth the risk, which is also how most people feel about them, even though they are completely harmless. Still, be nice because they are a marvel, even if they are a little terrifying. John, I'll see you on Tuesday. The Bizarre Bees Pin Club was so successful that this month, and this is the only time we'll do this, we're actually going to give you two pins, both the caterpillar and the moth. Thank you to everybody who signed up, and thanks both to the butterfly farmer and to Bart for letting me use their moth footage. Both channels are linked here.