Tobacco-Eating Caterpillar Feeds off Nicotine to Escape Predators

It might sound rather peculiar-and it certainly is-but did you know there's an insect that actually benefits from tobacco? It's the tobacco hornworm or Manduca sexta, and the creature actually chases its predators away with its nasty nicotine breath!

Here's how it works: This little guy uses a special trick in which it actually converts some of its food into a cloud of poisonous compound that makes its enemies turn away in disgust.

This guy, also known as the goliath worm, is a species that not only tolerates high levels of the addictive compound, but uses this material to push predators away.

"It's really a story about how an insect that eats a plant co-opts the plant for its own defense," study researcher Ian Baldwin, a professor at the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology in Germany said, via LiveScience.

Though researchers knew that the caterpillars fed off of plants containing nicotine, they were uncertain why these plants were avoided by ants and wasps.

Earlier research had suggested that tobacco hornworms grown on plants that do not produce much nicotine contain a lower activity of CYP6B46. The study pointed to their role of genes in helping the bug to neutralize the negative effects of the compound.

For this study, the Smithsonian reported that researchers altered some of the genes in the plants at a private ranch in Utah that disrupted the insect's ability to detect the nicotine compound in its food. This resulted in the silencing of a corresponding gene in the caterpillar. The experts then observed how changes in the bug's diet affected its survival. Results showed that caterpillars who fed on the genetically modified tobacco plants were more likely to be eaten by wolf spiders.

With the absence of the gene in the plants, the bugs were unable to properly ingest the nicotine.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).