To answer your excellent question, while real caterpillars don’t have noses, my caterpillar, who eats cherry pie and lollipops, is not one you would find in field guides. And while I think of it as having a nose on its face – this feature, along with other habits and characteristics of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, grew out of my imagination.
You might be interested to know that, in fact, real caterpillars don’t even have lungs. They breathe by taking in air through holes, called spiracles, on the sides of their bodies. The air passes through small tubes called tracheoles, where the oxygen is extracted by fluid in the body.
