Like many butterflies, the high brown fritillary spends the colder months as a hibernating caterpillar, and these die if winters are warm and wet.
But a caterpillar that can kill a child – really?
Upload a mugshot into an SUGV, a briefcase-sized robot than runs on caterpillar tracks, and it can identify a man walking in a crowd and follow him.
Pope Gelasius I compared the life of Christ to that of the caterpillar: Vermis quia resurrexit.
"Deer tendon with spring onion" comes second, at 168 yuan, followed by "beef tendon with Chinese caterpillar fungus" for 128 yuan.
Jonathan Fair of One2One theorises that Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", in which a shrunken Alice meets a water-pipe-smoking caterpillar, has had something to do with it.Despite its Middle Eastern pretensions, American hookah is not quite like the Egyptian kind.
Notably, a speculative craze has gripped the market for caterpillar fungus.
It is dug up on the Tibetan plateau, to the concern of environmentalists.In Chrysanthemum Village prices of caterpillar fungus, displayed in little bunches, run to more than 200 yuan ($30) a gram, close to the price of gold.
Could their spectacular success really have been achieved by hard work, caterpillar fungus and turtle blood, as their coach, Ma Junren, claimed?
This unusual medicine, consisting of the remains of a caterpillar from which a thin fungus of similar length has sprouted, is said to be a powerful aphrodisiac and antidote to fatigue.
"WE WANT a butterfly," John Bolton, America's ambassador to the UN, insisted earlier this year: "We don't intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success".
