Brazil is a country where in the forests there are not only many wild monkeys, but also something more terrible. There is a creature that hides better than a chameleon, and its poison is the most powerful biological toxin known to science.
Meet: caterpillar lonomia, it is Lonomia obliqua. Before meeting with her, scientists believed that when touching some butterfly larvae, a person can only have slight irritation on the skin. It turned out that a meeting with a lonomy, or a clown caterpillar, threatens a person not only with a burn, but in some cases with death.
This cutie kills several people annually. The reason for this is the strong poison that causes multiple internal bleeding in the victim's body. It is safe to say that lonomy is the most dangerous caterpillar on earth.
Habitat
So where does the lonomy caterpillar live? This caterpillar is the larva of a harmless and inconspicuous nocturnal butterfly from the family Peacock-eye (Saturnia), the genus Lonomia. The peacock-eye family cannot be considered numerous. It has only about 2300 species, of which 12 live in the Russian Far East.
Lonomia obliqua is found in the warm, humid forests of South America: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The butterfly is painted in light brown tones, which allows it to merge with the environment.
On the front wings you can see two symmetrical white spots of different sizes. A thin dark brown stripe runs along the surface of the wings. Invisible among the foliage, the butterfly waits until nightfall.
Unlike butterflies, lonomy caterpillars are active during the day. They usually live in the wild, but in recent years, cases of contact with them in public parks and gardens of local residents have become more frequent. Most often they are found in cedar thickets, fig groves, as well as fruit trees, such as avocados, peaches, pears, plums, and others.
Caterpillars love shaded, moist places. Tree trunks are ideal for them, where the protective color makes them practically invisible and therefore especially dangerous.
Butterfly biology
The body of the butterflies is thick and fluffy, with wide wings, on which there is sometimes a spot in the shape of an eye. Peacock-eye - large insects. For example, the peacock-eye Hercules, or Coscinocera hercules, living in Australia, has a wingspan of up to 280 millimeters, and the Russian pear peacock-eye, or Saturnia pear (Saturnia pyri), up to 150 millimeters.
All Saturn caterpillars are similar in appearance, they are large and covered with long bristles or warts with spikes or hairs, through the cavities in which poison from the glands is injected into the victim’s body. All of them produce toxins that cause irritation of the skin, to protect against natural enemies, but the caterpillar Lonomia obliqua is a record holder among them.
This greenish-brown caterpillar looks quite impressive, the length of the adult larva is about 7 centimeters, and its entire body is covered with branched, spruce-like spikes. Its distinguishing feature is a white spot on the back, similar to the letter U.
Fortunately, the dangerous period when the lonomy caterpillars are a threat lasts only 2-3 months. After they pupate and become butterflies.
How does poisoning happen?
Most often, contact with the caterpillar occurs when a person leans against the trees on which they hid. Touching a lonomy, or a clown caterpillar, the victim receives a dose of poison through thin hollow needles.
Poison (LD50) has a destructive effect on fibrinogen - a protein that is part of the blood plasma and is responsible for its coagulation. The toxin triggers inflammatory processes in the body.
Symptoms of Poisoning
The first signs of poisoning begin to appear within 12 hours after contact with the caterpillar, their intensity depends on the amount of poison that has entered the bloodstream. General malaise, fever, chills, and headache appear.
At the initial stage, a person feels itching and burning in the puncture site with a moderate to intense force. Further, the place of penetration of the poison swells and small hemorrhages appear in this area.
Stages of infection
If the process is not stopped at an early stage, a hemorrhagic syndrome occurs, which manifests itself in bleeding of the mucous membranes. After about a day, disturbances in the functioning of the central nervous system and lungs begin, internal bleeding, including gastrointestinal bleeding, frequent hemorrhages in the brain, pathological hemolysis (destruction of red blood cells), damage to kidney nephrons, which leads to severe renal failure.
In case of poisoning with lonomia, the victim must be completely at rest, put him in order to avoid bleeding, and be taken to a doctor.
Fortunately, just touching the caterpillar of the lonomy is not enough to cause great harm to human health, and even more so to kill it. Despite the toxicity of the poison, only a small amount of it enters the body through a puncture. The dose received from 20-100 punctures can be dangerous.
This happens most often in contact with several tracks at the same time, which, alas, is not so uncommon, since tracks are most often assembled in dense groups. Below, in the photo, caterpillars of the lonomy on the bark of a tree. It is difficult to notice such a colony, given the peculiarities of color and their love for dark places.
Quite often, toxin poisoning of the caterpillar of Lonomia ends in death. Annually from ten to thirty deaths are registered, approximately the same number of people remain disabled. At the moment, according to statistics, the mortality rate is 1.7%.
For comparison, the same mortality rate from a rattlesnake bite is 1.8%. It is noteworthy that the proportion of lonomia poison is only 0.001% of the poison contained in the bite of a rattlesnake. A fairly clear description of the destructive power that this baby possesses, is not it?
Brazilian doctors today have developed an antidote that neutralizes the poison of lonomia. However, it is necessary to enter it within 24 hours after the defeat, and this is not always possible, since the victim, as a rule, does not attach much importance to the incident and attributes the primary symptoms to a usual malaise or a cold.
The use of lonomia poison in medicine
There is a bright side to all this sad story. The venom of the lonomy caterpillar, being a powerful anticoagulant, that is, a substance that prevents blood coagulation, can help many people avoid the problems associated with increased blood viscosity and thrombus formation. Research in this direction is underway.
