What do larvae do?

Eat and eat and eat. One kind of moth larva eats 86,000 times its weight in the first two months of life. If you did the same, you’d put away 300 tons (305 t) of food! Day by day, the larvae grow bigger. Since their outer skins can’t expand, the insects molt. The young insects crawl out of the old skin. Then the new skin, which has been forming under the old skin, hardens. The insects may eat the skin they shed or leave it behind. It looks just like a real insect—except that it is hollow! After larvae have molted several times, they finally stop eating and molt for the last time. Now when the skin splits, they are in an entirely new stage of life. They are pupae.