A caterpillar is the larval form of a lepidopteran (a
member of the insect order comprising butterflies and
moths). Caterpillars have long segmented bodies and many
sets of "legs". They eat leaves voraciously,
grow rapidly, shed their skins generally four or five
times, and eventually pupate into an adult form. Caterpillars
have six true legs (being hexapods) on the thorax, up
to four pairs of prolegs on the middle segments of the
abdomen, and sometimes a single pair of prolegs on the
last abdominal segment. The sawfly larva (Hymenoptera)
superficially resembles a caterpillar, but can usually
be distinguished because the caterpillar has a gap between
true legs and prolegs, whereas the sawfly does not. Another
difference is that lepidopteran caterpillars have crochets
or hooks on the prolegs. The gap between the prolegs and
the true legs can vary from a slight gap in some species
to a large gap in families such as the geometridae.
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