The beginning of the article.
Scientists in Hawaii have discovered a new, rare and bizarre species of carnivorous, bone-collecting caterpillars. After hatching, the tiny insects live almost their entire lives in the web of a single spider, eating any weakened or recently deceased insects that have been caught by their host – all while adorned in a grisly collection of body parts.
“They’ll also find bits of dry bug jerky stuck to the web and eat that,” said Daniel Rubinoff, a professor and entomology chair at the University of Hawaii Manoa. They’re not just meat-eating but also cannibalistic. If they come across another, smaller caterpillar they will happily consume it. “That’s why we never find more than one caterpillar per web,” Rubinoff said.
that live in one 5 mile area in Oahu
cool, so it can be named in the Hawaiian language right? So that its name will reflect its native habitat?
are working on publishing a species description that will include a formal scientific (Latin) name
There’s nothing to stop it having a species name using an Indigenous word, though itll have to fit into the already extremely latin (and ancient greek) heavy family genus etc.
This is a pretty weirdly written pop science article i dont know what it says (LATIN) after scentific. odds are it ends up as something Oestioii tho
there’s plenty of plants and animals named after people for example
There’s nothing to stop it having a species name using an Indigenous word
honkeys
nevermind hawaiian OR latin, the caterpillar deserves a proper american name, like SpiderMKULTRA Badburger
this is what they will take from us
“We’ve only collected 62 of them over 20 years,”
So it hasn’t been recently discovered? Or is it that type of thing where it’s been discovered in a research collection or something
Sound like a bit of the latter, or it has never been previously characterized as a unique species until now.
They found even more?! Those carnivorous caterpillars go hard.
quick destroy their ecosystem for corporate profit
