Thursday 5 January 2012

Caterpillars

Spotted these caterpillars when out cycling this morning.

There were two caterpillars on this 'teh kampung' bush.  The young caterpillar is a beautiful fresh green, and blended in nicely with the green leaves of the bush.  Could have easily missed it as it was really quite well camouflaged.  Unfortunately, as you can see below, I did not get a good photo of this green caterpillar.  Should have taken more than just this one photo but I didn't. 



If you can make out the green caterpillar in the photo, you will see that it is a large caterpillar and I would estimate the length of this caterpillar at around 8 cm to 10 cm (if I remember correctly!) and it was almost as thick as my little finger.  This photo shows only the underside of the caterpillar, where it clung to the leave stem.

Like I said, I should have taken more photos.....

The other caterpillar, found on the same bush, is a beautiful, attractive yellow with some patterned lines and dots.  My guess is that this yellow caterpillar is already at a later stage, maybe even the final instar, and the caterpillar is probably getting ready for pupation.



Looked through the blog on butterflies at: http://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/, but no luck there.

I do think now that it is quite likely a moth caterpillar.
Could it be one of the species of the Sphinx or Hawk Moths? 
I am still guessing.

Any idea on the species, anyone?




No comments:

Post a Comment