Recycling the insect way

In what has been described to me as a quite rare moment to capture, this Katydid was caught in the act of eating its shed exoskeleton.

This insect emerged from its final moult, having gone through a number of them previously, and proceeded to eat the shed skin as it inflated and dried its new form.

Each shed brings about a new stage called 'instars' until the adult form is reached.

Thank you to Denis for the research and enthusiasm.

This guy is, of course, not an insect.

Spiders are great recyclers though.

They will often eat waste silk.

This one caught in the act of building a early morning web, with the hind leg just about to pick up the web from the spinnerets and fix it to one of the strands radiating from the centre.