2023-05-15 08:54:00
Recently a large caterpillar crawled across the sidewalk Fidelityreader Matt Megens. Megens estimated the length at regarding nine centimeters and had never seen such a large caterpillar. A willow wood caterpillar adorned an enclosed photo.
Willow wood caterpillars can grow up to ten centimeters in length and are also quite wide. Their shiny body is black with orange-red, red or purple, with a cream or light orange underside. They have a large head with large black eyes. They are one of the largest caterpillars, perhaps the largest caterpillar in our country.
They are certainly not cuddly with that size, that ferocious head, the warning colors and that hard shine. If you bother them, they excrete an acid that smells like vinegar. It is not recommended to get that smell on your fingers, but certainly not in your mouth or eyes, which can scare away hungry attackers. That acid is also a useful aid in digesting wood.
Moth disguised as barkcloth
They don’t get that big quickly, it takes them at least two years, often three and sometimes four and maybe five years. All the while they feed on dead wood. Willow wood is the most popular, followed by poplar and oak trunk. For lack of anything better, they also like birch. The four willow wood caterpillars I encountered in my life were all in a watery environment. One was perched on an old deciduous fence.
When the caterpillars have finished eating and want to pupate into a butterfly, they leave the wood. They do this up to and including May and once more from July. Under dead trees their sloppily gnawed exits can be seen, as if a woodpecker has hacked into them. Former customers probably spent their last winter in a cocoon, under loose bark.
Megens’ caterpillar must have been looking for a place to pupate. The colorful caterpillar transforms into a well-built moth that looks like a piece of bark.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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