Josh Clark

Which any even the dumbest of birds can be like there's a caterpillar around here.

I know.

Caterpillars have tremendous self-control.

They do.

We mentioned that they have spinnerets, that they can spin silk.

And they use it to great effect in all sorts of different ways, including defense.

Apparently, some kinds of caterpillars will, like, spin a little thing of silk that they'll attach to the leaf they're on.

And when a predator comes, they just jump off.

Yeah.

Basically like John McClane in Die Hard.

Uh-huh.

And they're attached to the silk, so they swing into a window in the Nakatomi building and then climb back up when the bird goes away.

But they just jump off the leaf to get away.

What do you know?

Or if they inch, they just shoot themselves off.

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.