#uraba

This guy is a Gum-Leaf Skeletoniser, and they wear their old heads as a hat each time they molt because why not.

Colombia’s prosecution said Friday it would charge more than a dozen former executives of the popular Chiquita bananas on charges they used death squads to increase profits. In a press statement, the prosecution that said 13 former Chiquita executives, including three Americans, one Costa Rican and one Honduran for mass killings by paramilitary groups that took place between 1997 and 2004, will be expected in court to respond to terrorism support charges.

The criminal charges against Chiquita are the first after more than a century of often brutal labor practices, initially under the name of the United Fruit Company. 

How much blood is there on a banana?

The charges brought are only about human rights violations between 1990 and 2004 when Chiquita allegedly financed paramilitary groups through subsidiaries and death squads’ front companies in a phenomenon called “para-economics.” Hundreds, possibly thousands of locals were murdered by paramilitary group AUC in Chiquita’s area of influence in the northwestern Uraba region. 

The AUC paramilitaries received $1.7 million from Chiquita between 1997 and 2004, the year that possible legal consequences of the mass  human rights violations forced the company to leave the country.

MAD HATTERPILLAR (Uraba lugens)

Nuytsia@Tas, 2009. “Totempole head - Uraba lugens” South Arm, Tasmania

If you’re even slightly familiar with Lewis Carroll’s novels, the mad hatterpillar (or gum leaf skeletoniser) won’t need much of an explanation. Adult skeletonisers are quite unassuming looking moths, but the larvae owe their nickname to the tower of head capsules retained from each instar following ecdysis. The role these hats of heads play isn’t clear, though a study by behavioural ecologist Petah Low et al. suggests a defensive function. They’re wrong.