Wings are fawn coloured through shades of green and brown to red, with two black and white bands isolating the eyespots.

Larvae eat a wide range of plants including mopane, Carissa grandiflora, Diospyros, Ficus, Rhus, Sclerocarya afra, Terminalia and Trema.

Like most caterpillars, the mopane worm's life cycle starts when it hatches in the summer, after which it proceeds to eat the foliage in its immediate vicinity.

Provided that the larva has not been harvested after its fourth moult, it burrows underground to pupate, the stage at which it undergoes complete transformation to become the adult moth.

Often, more than 40% of a mopane worm's eggs will be attacked by various parasites, and the caterpillars themselves are susceptible to infection from a virus that has a high mortality rate.

Like most caterpillars, the mopane worm is a voracious eater, and will continue to eat - almost non-stop - until it reaches the next stage of its life cycle, when it burrows underground to undergo metamorphosis.

The picker then squeezes it like a tube of toothpaste or lengthwise like a concertina, and whips it to expel the slimy, green contents of the gut.

[8] Dried mopane worms can be eaten raw as a crisp snack; however, in Botswana people tend not to eat the head.

Alternatively, mopane worms can be soaked to rehydrate, before being fried until they are crunchy, or cooked with onion, tomatoes and spices and then served with pap or sadza.

Collectors may organise teams of hundreds of people to hand pick the caterpillars from the trees, after which they are bagged en masse, weighed, and sent off to be processed.

Whereas this relationship profits both the commercial harvester and the farmer, it is often to the detriment of the local community for whom the caterpillars may previously have been an important source of food and seasonal income.

As mopane worms represent an important sector in the local rural economy, they attract large numbers of people who seek to cash in on the profits from selling the insects as food.

[1][12] Fenced-in browsing animals may rely on the mopane, and on other trees favoured by the caterpillars, as an important part of their diet.

A good case is in Nkayi District, Zimbabwe, where most mopane woodland areas once produced a high population of these worms; but the harvests have decreased drastically.

If this stage was to be successfully completed, collaboration with local farmers and communities would be required to ensure that the caterpillars are not harvested for a set number of years.