Contrary to popular belief, the natural world provides several parallels for the behaviour of decadent humans. One of the most dramatic of these is found in the behaviour of a caterpillar after being stung by a parasitoid wasp, which injects its larvae directly into the caterpillar’s body. As the wasp larvae feed on its insides and grow to maturity, the parasitised caterpillar goes on munching away on vegetation as if nothing had happened — until the larvae finally chew their way out of its body. Whereupon the caterpillar spins a protective coccoon around them and ferociously defends them from predators as if they were its own young, until the wasps are ready to fly away and the exhausted caterpillar helpfully starves to death.
