Protection
The Common Crow is distasteful due to chemicals extracted from the latex of the food plants consumed in their caterpillar stage. Thus protected, they fly in a leisurely manner, gliding skillfully with wings held slightly above the horizontal. This indicates its protection due to inedibility to a predator. The inexperienced predator will try attacking it, but will learn soon enough to avoid this butterfly as the alkaloids in its body cause vomiting.
The butterfly has tough, leathery wings. When attacked it shams death and oozes liquid which causes any predators to release them. The butterfly thus has the ability to recover 'miraculously' after the predator thinks it has been killed.
Read more about this topic: Euploea Core
Famous quotes containing the word protection:
“A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, and must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)