I am curious what moth/butterfly these caterpillers will turn into. I think they were fairly large, between 2 and 4 inches in length, but my memory could be flawed.
The photo was taken in Belize. Extra credit if anyone could tell me what they are doing all clustered on this leaf.
Colibi? IIRC, you are the Central American biology / zoology expert.
Follow this link for the photo:
The closest I can find as a non-professional with some hobby interest and usually pretty good Google-fu is the Frangipani Moth, although that has too many bands and doesn’t have the golden hairs (and has a spinx moth “tail”), so I don’t think that’s it. But I can’t find anything that fits your photo completely.
Well, one thing they’re not doing is mating (the caption on your picture suggests this). Caterpillars don’t mate, as they are not reproductive adult members of their species.
I’m trying to ID this but a few factors are at play here
I understand a little better how archeologists feel when they are examining a historical piece with little context. Were these found on a tree on a rotting leaf or on the ground on a leaf? Are there a great many of them in the area or only a few? Did you find them during the dark or light? One of the more important questions that comes to mind is the time of year that they were found. Were they on the underside of the leaf? Details like these are important because…
There are just SO SO MANY different species. I looked through images for a while and didn’t see anything similar to these. That could be because…
They are a very immature form which takes on additional banding, coloring or hairs during the caterpillar stage.
Asking what caterpillar something is with just a picture is like asking a mechanic who manufactured a particular bolt or screw by just looking at it. This same thing applies to spiders and many insects.
I am definitely not any sort of qualified scientist of any kind I just enjoy looking for answers.
ID’ing caterpillars is pretty tough, even for lepidopterists. As others have said, they are extremely diverse in the tropics. For a lot of them, the adult form may not even be known (or vice versa). There are a lot that look similar, even in distantly related species.
One thing for sure: Don’t touch it! Anything with that kind of color pattern and hairs is bound to be stinging/toxic.
It’s not Frangipani moth, which is common around here, but it could be related. Or not.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I have included some additional information below that might help, if indeed there is help to be had. I had no idea it was going to be this difficult.
Yeah. I was going for humor. But I think I might correct the caption in the interest of science.
Good questions.
The photo was taken during the middle of the day. On a live leaf hanging from a tree in the dense rainforest. I don’t recall if it was the upper or under side of the leaf. These were the only specimens I noticed at the time. It was late December. The location was in the Cayo District in the interior of Belize.
I thought it would be easy to figure out. I did numerous Google image searches and came up empty. So I turned to the Dope.
Interesting theory. Do caterpillers go through an immature coloration stage like, say, birds?
Fascinating (regarding the difficulty in identifying caterpillers). I had the naive impression that given the amount of biologic research that is done on nearly any topic I could imagine, that there was an easy and well known one-to-one correspondence between caterpillers and butteryflys/moths. But, “the adult form may not even be known”? Wow. Maybe I stumbled across an unknown species! (just kidding).
And yes, fortunately I knew enough about animal coloration to realize that these bright colors were probably warning signs saying “do not touch!”.
Excellent find! This is the closest image to my photo that I have seen. The only difference is the number of white bands. Other than that it is pretty much a match!
We visit The Butterfly Farm in St Martin every winter. The guides there talk about food preference being very important in the life cycle of butterflies and moths.
Yes - they shed their skins several times during their larval development. Usually, they just become a bigger version of the previous, but some species change their appearance.
As Mangetout posted, a lot of caterpillars just get bigger when they moult, but some change their coloration or the “accessories”(hairs, horns, spikes, etc) on their bodies.
I had no idea it was going to be this difficult.