caterpillars) generally have three pairs of thoracic legs on the thoracic segments, which are the true legs retained into adulthood, and a maximum of five pairs of prolegs on the abdominal segments (with an exception of up to seven pairs 1), including a terminal pair on the hind-end referred to as anal (or caudal) prolegs (Fig. Discovery of this elaborate silk utilisation technique offers fresh insights into the diversity of silk use in lepidopteran larvae and provides potential designs for robot locomotion systems. They construct the foothold by spinning a continuous silk thread in a zigzag manner and controlling the discharge of adhesive to attach the folded parts of the silk to a substrate. This enables them to walk not only on horizontal floor surfaces but also on wall and ceiling surfaces, even those with slippery or smooth surfaces. In this study, we show that bagworms construct a ladder-like foothold using their silk to walk without using prolegs. Indeed, how they walk with only three pairs of thoracic legs is unknown at present. However, bagworms are unable to use their prolegs for walking because these are always accommodated in a portable bag thus, they are unable to walk using such general locomotory behaviours. Such locomotory behaviours, represented by ‘crawling’ and ‘inching’ motions, have widely inspired the development of locomotion systems in soft robotics. While walking on horizontal substrates, caterpillars skilfully engage all their legs, including three pairs of thoracic legs and a maximum of five pairs of prolegs, to move in a flexible wave-like motion.
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