The caterpedes are a group of abundant and diverse insects found well across HP-02017 in the Middle Therocene. They are, as their name would suggest, the larval forms of moths: yet, oddly, they never actually become moths at all: they are neotenic, maturing and mating in a larval form without ever undergoing pupation.
A misplaced hormonal signal that halted their metamorphosis but allowed them to grow functional gonads has enabled the caterpedes to spread far and wide in a world that, in its inception, was filled with the essential insect life such as pollinators and detritivores, but had many ecological vacancies left unoccupied. Thus, these mutant, non-metamorphosing caterpillars came to fill the niches of various other arthropods: in the case of the caterpedes, some became scavengers on the leaf litter feeding on dead vegetation like millipedes, while others became predators that hunted smaller insects, much as centipedes or arachnids would.
But even still, this was a world where predators abounded, even the founding hamsters that were present since the beginning. As such, the caterpedes have had to innovate with various defenses since day one: and in the Temperocene, few are as remarkable as the fiery blackbuff (Pseudophiops caudatucephalus).
Fiery blackbuffs share their habitat, the damp tropical forest floors of Mesoterra, with the five-eyed whipwyrm (Pyrophimys pentoculus): one of the most lethal of the burrowurms delivering a deadly sting in its front claws that can incapacitate an animal the size of a piggalo and kill anything else smaller. The five-eyed whipwyrm is generally a placid insectivore: yet it is this diet of ants, slurped up with its long flexible tongue and narrow mouth, that provides it with the toxins it needs to produce and concentrate an even more powerful paravenom.
As such, the distinctive arrangement of three false eye-spots and red stripes on a black background is one recognized and feared by every creature that lives in those same forests that the whipwyrm frequents: and the fiery blackbuff takes full advantage of it. Mimicking the distinctive conical head and five false eye spots on its posterior end, the blackbluff flashes its distinctive behind when bothered by predators: primarily small ground-dwelling ratbats. The sight of something resembling a deadly burrowurm sends many would-be attackers fleeing: and they usually do not return to confirm, allowing the otherwise-defenseless caterpedes to inch along another day.
