Podcast: Play in new window Download Duration: β Subscribe: RSS More. Are there any bugs with so much venom they could kill you? What would happen if you ate 5, moth digestive tracts? Why am I even talking about this stuff? Listen and find out! The southern flannel moth and its larva, a puss caterpillar. Technically, if an insect is poisonous that means it will make you sick if you eat it.
But you can call both poisonous because everyone will know what you mean. Also, you would probably get sick if you ate a venomous bug too, now that I think about it.
Remember that humans are omnivores, and that means we will eat just about anything. But lots of people would choose the crickets. Some really are poisonous because they eat plants that contain toxins and store those toxins in the body. You know what? Why are you eating these moths anyway, and why are you not dying of cyanide poisoning? There are a number of closely related moth species that children in the Carnia region of Italy traditionally eat. Its body is grayish, and one pair of its wings are greenish or gray with red spots, while the other pair of wings is mostly red.
Researchers have studied this, mostly because they were worried about the children. Since most of the time the kids pull the moths apart and only eat the tiny piece of the digestive tract that contains sugar, that reduces the amount of cyanide they ingest. So, eating 5, moth digestive tracts aside, are there any bugs out there that are so venomous that they could kill you? Yes there are. There are a number of Lonomia species. The adult moths are brown or grayish, with the males sometimes yellow.
It has delicate darker brown markings to help it mimic small dead leaves. The species that is most venomous is sometimes called the giant silkworm moth, Lonomia obliqua, and it lives in South America. The caterpillar grows to about two inches long, or 5. They can cause a rash, though, since the spines are very thin, detach easily, and can irritate the skin. But the caterpillar of the giant silkworm moth has spines with powerful venom. The venom contains an anti-clotting agent that causes internal bleeding that can eventually lead to death.
