The caterpillar of the Western Tiger Swallowtail at Fintry Provincial Park.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

With large bulbous eyes on top of its head and a forked tongue that sticks out when threatened, the rather ominous-looking caterpillar of the Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly could be the most unusual bug in the Southern Interior.

The menacing eyes and forked tongue are of course not its actual eyes and tongue, but the caterpillar's way of defending itself.

"(It's) 100 per cent to look like a snake," Stuart Brown, owner of Lake Country's The Bug Guys Pets and Exotics told iNFOnews.ca. "The tongue part is part of the mimicry to look like a snake's forked tongue."

The caterpillar's mouth and a cluster of eyes are underneath what appears to be the insect's head, but prod the bug with a leaf and it stands its ground poking out its forked "tongue."

"It's also a shock factor even if the snake illusion doesn't work, all of a sudden this big colourful bloom comes out and that is... freaky," Brown said.

The caterpillar hatches from larvae in the spring and spends the next few months eating before finding a place to pupate and spend the winter. Come the spring or early summer it will then emerge as a Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

As a butterfly, it's one of the largest in B.C. with a wing span of anywhere from 70 to 120 millimetres.

While its fierce looks are just a façade, the caterpillar does have other ways to defend itself.

"(It's) bathed in chemicals that make a very a sweet and sour smell and even more so taste," Brown said.

While tasting bad won't directly affect a single caterpillar's lifespan, as a species, predators get used to knowing that some insects taste bad or make them sick.

Brown said poison dart frogs and monarch butterflies also do the same thing.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

"It's a matter of a learned difference so this would-be predator never eats one of its species again," he said. "A bird gets extremely sick... so the bird knows don't eat the big orange butterflies."

The slightly menacing looks of the caterpillar of the Western Tiger Swallowtail even have a place in pop culture.

Brown said the caterpillar of the Western Tiger Swallowtail is the inspiration for Caterpie Pokemon, one of the first generation Pokemon characters.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

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