one very hungry caterpillar

Of course you will have read the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

The story of a caterpillar, hatched, as caterpillars are, from an egg …

that (presumably) had been laid beneath a leaf, by a butterfly some weeks before.

Anyway, upon hatching (which occurred one warm and sunny spring day)…..

said caterpillar was HUNGRY.  And I mean seriously hungry.  So hungry in fact that he ate his way through a mind-boggling array of foodstuffs.

From pears…..

to plums…..

via ice creams, sausages and doughnuts, he scoffed the lot!

Of course that got us thinking.  Because in amongst the obviously made-up parts of the story, there was some truth weaving its way.  Yes, a caterpillar hatches from an egg, but no, of course a caterpillar would not eat an ice cream.  Or a sausage.  Or even a doughnut.  However tasty it might look to us.

What, we wondered therefore, was there in the story that was made up; and, now that we are such experts on life cycles, what things can we identify as being true?

As Maddie noted, the author made up the bit about the caterpillar eating an apple, two pears and a lollipop, but the part about him popping out of an egg is undoubtedly true.

And even though caterpillars eat leaves…..

as this one did towards the end of the story, who are we to say he did it because of the tummy ache that resulted from earlier greediness concerning apples and oranges?  And salami?

     

That the caterpillar ate a hot-dog is clearly made up.

But what about the part where once he had eaten his fill and had become an exceedingly FAT caterpillar…..

he eventually stopped eating and took himself off to the branch of a tree…..

on which to suspend himself during the transformation from caterpillar, via chrysalis to beautiful butterfly?

That bit of course, however extraordinary it might sound…..

is perfectly true.  Isn’t nature amazing!