this is simply too cool.
The lad’s end comment “so camoflage is just fooling what’s looking at you?”
biology
caterpillars
The lad has a thing for caterpillars lately. 🙂
we’ve found three SYCAMORE TUSSOCK MOTH. They died on us. We need to figure out what they eat so they don’t die next time.
they apparently eat the leaves of sycamore trees. interesting. But we put leaves in with them from where we found them. I guess I need to learn how to identify a sycamore tree. 🙂
we’ve also had these for a short time. HICKORY TUSSOCK MOTH. They escaped though. 🙂
Found the caterpillars at this site.
Monarch butterflies
this is Chris.
he is a monarch butterfly.
we found his egg while camping.
He seems like a nice ‘lad’ (not that I know if he is a lad or not, but the lad we have is enjoying watching him grow).
We’ve successfully hatched out into adult stage a white Moth in the past, so we’re hoping to be successful with Chris the monarch as well.
This site is helpful in teaching more about monarchs.
We’re finding it an interesting experience. We lost one monarch egg to ants, we lost another when we changed out the leaves (they didn’t transition well), so we’re hopeful that this time will be more successful. Time will indeed tell.
That lad is VERY much into capturing caterpillars lately and seeing if we can get them to change into moths and butterflies lately.
His latest capture was a fuzzy red caterpillar that poops/pees and runs VERY fast when you attempt to catch him. It’s was quite the achievement for the lad to catch him. We’ve never had another caterpillar do that so it was quite the learning experience.
Some caterpillars we’ve learned don’t handle capture well so we don’t catch them. Some will just up and die. Others within a day or two will pupate. Others just wander and seem to do well in captivity. It’s been educational to say the least.