SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : FREAKY FASHION

FREAKY FASHION : The ' bone collector ' doesn't play with its foods. It wears it.

HAWAII is a beautiful tropical paradise and also home to formidable creepy crawly predators. There are spiders that impale prey in midair and venomous centipedes that can grow to surprising lengths.

And there are the carnivorous caterpillars, an evolutionary rarity. And now scientists have discovered one very hungry caterpillar that doesn't just eat other insects - it decorates itself in the macabre mishmash of the body parts of its meals.

Nicknamed the bone collector, this caterpillar and its grisly taste in couture are described in the journal science. '' This behavior was utterly unknown,'' said Daniel Rubinoff, a University of Hawaii at Manoa entomologist and an author of the study.

The bone collector is found only within a six-square-mile swath [ 15 square kilometers ] of a mountain range on the island of Oahu. There it resides exclusively on cobwebs spun by spiders in logs and rock cavities.

As the caterpillars skulk about the webs, they scavenge dead and dying insects and other arthropods ensnared in the sticky silk.

Dr. Rubinoff first encountered the bone collector caterpillar in 2008 when he examined a web inside a tree hollow.

The caterpillars are incredibly rare. More than 150 field surveys in the area have yielded only 62 bone collector specimens.

The scientists determined that the bone collector belongs to Hyposmocoma, a genus of small moth species that, during their larval stage, spin protective cases of silk that resemble candy wrappers, cigars and more.

Like hermit crabs, these caterpillars carry their cases with them as they move before emerging from them as full-grown moths.

Some species decorate their mobile homes with bits of wood, algae and shells to blend into their environments.

The bone collector puts a macabre spin on the practice. Using silk, it weaves bits of the dead insects that it encounters on the spider's web.

Scientists say they include weevil heads and the abdomens of beetles.

The World Students Society thanks Jack Tamisiea.