Insect Identification 101

My daughter found an enormous caterpillar today. Naturally, she wanted to know what it was. But I’d never seen anything like it before, and our insect identification books only have pictures of adults. What to do? To the Internet!

Fortunately, it’s a showy larva: rich chocolate-brown flesh with large white spots. And I knew that she’d found it on our grape vine. A bit of Googling brought me to What’s That Bug, which might be billed as an art project, but is filled with useful pictures that let me identify our captive – a larval Pandora sphinx moth (Eumorpha pandorus).

               

Knowing the animal’s common and species names opens up whole new avenues for search. The online BugGuide tells us that the button on the back of the caterpillar means it’s in its final instar, and it’ll pupate soon. Wikipedia says that it’ll burrow underground when it’s ready to pupate. So we've put it in a bigger jar with a couple of inches of dirt at the bottom, and lots of fresh grape leaves. We’ll see if we can ecclose a big gorgeous green moth in a few months.

Much better photo than any of my own attempts by Patrick Coin 

Comments

[Emily]

I love What's That Bug! Ever since I first discovered it last year, I find myself going back at least a couple times a month to identify something or other I've just run across in the wild.