Josh Clark

They inch so quickly that it shoots them right off of the leaf.

You've probably seen them before.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that.

But I think probably more often than not, what you're seeing are gregarious caterpillars getting together.

What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational.

Oh.

An older generation will leave that silk for the next generation to use.

And that next generation then can grow bigger and stronger because they didn't have to use that energy to create the silk that leads to the food source.

I thought that was pretty nice.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, same thing.

Hand-me-down silk, length of rope from grandpa.

What else?

There's another thing, too, that we haven't quite figured out.

And we, I mean the entomology world.

And by we, I also mean them.

It may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community as opposed to being solitary.

Because, yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself if you have a bunch of other friends helping you.

It's easier to find food if you have other people looking at the same time you are and then telling you what they found.