Just so you know: caterpillars are high maintenance pets! When they were little, all I had to do was put in some fresh branches and change the paper towels every few days. Now, I am lucky if I don’t have to put in MORE branches 12 hours later in the day. (The caterpillars are up to about 4 inches in length).
Getting Big
It’s a good thing that so many wild caterpillars get eaten or we would have denuded trees!
Also, as the caterpillars grow so does the size of their frass (poop). And it’s kinda stinky, which surprised me as it’s just processed plant materials… I wonder if the frass is good to fertilize the garden?
Frass in one hand and wish in the other....
I have had fun observing my cecropia moth caterpillars grow but I am ready to let them go. Tonight I set free about 10 of them onto our backyard lilac bush. Sadly, many of the ones I let go last week have been eaten but such is they way of things. One fell off (I am guessing) and was found on the ground half eaten by ants.
One thing you must have to raise these guys: patience. You cannot simply pluck them off a branch, as they will hold onto a branch until their little claspers break off (no, I have not done this, but trust me, it can happen). You have to coax them onto another branch or your hand to move them. And they are not very speedy.
A hungry caterpillar can be motivated to move toward a fresh leaf, though. I have no idea how they detect their food source (smell or some version of it??) but they can locate fresh leaves from across one side of the cage and will move rapidly toward them.
Here are some pictures of the cage I came up with: a large, plastic flower pot covered with flexible screen mesh.
Also, be sure not to disturb them when they are resting and getting ready to shed their skin. They will jerk their body from side to side if you (or another caterpillar) accidentally bump them. You might be able to see the silk pad they use to anchor themselves to a branch (or the top of the cage, in my case) when they are in this resting phase. They sometimes hold themselves in what I like to call the Mr. Burns pose (a la The Simpsons), with their head extended back and legs curled up together.
Silk pad
Excellent!
It’s interesting how many variations there are in their color and shading as they grow bigger. The younger ones are a deep leaf green and then turn yellow green to milky green. Then their knob (hur hur) colors change from red to orange.
Now orange!
Big Fella
These are so awesome! Jealous!!!
Great close-up photos! I will check back to see their development.
Thanks, Michele! Although from looking at your blog, I think you take better photos. I’ll keep posting more photos (when I get off my duff and upload them from my camera…).
I’m just trying to help my grand-daughter out with a little project and it’s new to me. Do these little things(in the beginning) need to have a branch to grow on or can they gain some body mass in a container? Also will they kill a tree by stripping the leaves off? I have no idea what I’m doing but trying to learn for my grand-daughters’ sake. Can you help me to know what I am into??
I will be anxious to hear from you and thanking you in advance.
Patty
Patty,
Well, I’m no expert but I will try to answer your questions. By “little things” are you talking about tiny caterpillars or unhatched eggs? You should try to match up whatever tree/shrub the eggs were laid on and feed the new caterpillars that food source if possible. Otherwise, I hear you can get them to eat something different IF you start them while they are just hatched. They get too picky when they are older.
The very first meal for a just-out-of-the-egg caterpillar is the leftover egg bits. If it is a new cecropia moth caterpillar, it will be very, very small…so small you might just miss seeing it on the leaf as I did! At this stage, you can just put a few slighty damp leaves (too much water will create mold) in a small jar and that will do. You can watch to see how much they eat per day, but it takes them a while when they are tiny.
You will, however, probably have to change out the leaves as the old ones get dried out…they like juicy, fresh ones every few days. The best way to move these tiny caterpillars from one leaf to a new one is to use a child’s paintbrush. Just gently roll the bristles of the brush underneath them and lift them off the leaf.
Expect large numbers to die off, but some will survive. As they get older, you will have to increase the size of the container and start adding whole branches stuck in a water container. I just broke off a few branches from my lilac bush (which is what my brood hatched on) and stuck them into a small vase….BUT you will have to cover the opening to the water with plastic or paper towels as the caterpillars can drown in the water.
In theory, if ALL of the caterpillars were to survive into their last instar them, yes, they could eat quite a bit off a tree. However, nature usually compensates for this by having almost everything outside EAT growing caterpillars….birds, wasps, even squirrels eat them. The exception to this rule is when you have communal groups of caterpillars that live in a bunch and can have a serious impact on growing trees. But, even then, the trees can eventually fight back by emitting chemicals…but that’s another blog post. The basic answer is that I have never heard of cecropia moths stripping off enough leaves to kill a tree.
Hope that helps!
I’m pretty sure my catepillar died. I bought it from the MN state fair last Sunday and have been feeding it Ash, and other trees since then. He ate a lot the first couple of day’s so I had to replenish the leaves every 12 hours or so, but yesterday it stopped eating. I got worried and noticed the leaves were starting to shrivel from it not eating them so I grabbed some new leaves and pulled it off the old one (with out ripping off a clasper) and then placed it back in with the new leaves. Today it was sitting on the bottom with a trail of feces coming out it’s but and looked shrivled up a bit. Not big and fat like it used to. I took it out and it was lifeless other than a tiny bit of twitching. It also has a little slime on it’s outer body and quite a bit coming from it’s mouth. The slime seems to come out and go back in as if it was breathing. It does move a little when I touch it and it’s head and moth seem to move slightly, but all it’s claspers are wide open (minus the back one) and it’s not doing anything. I tried sticking a oak leave up to it’s mouth, but it wont eat it. So I left it in it’s mouth and it either pushed it out or the breathing movement I was talking about pushed it out. I can take a picture of it and send it to you if you would like. Please tell me what to do. I don’t want it to rot, but I don’t want to disturb it either.
Lindsay,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I think your caterpillar has had it. It sounds like it has got some sort of fungal infection, which is very, very common and happens to a lot of caterpillars. I know I lost over 1/3 of my brood this way.
On a side note, one of the interesting things about caterpillars is that they “breathe” through tiny holes, or spiracles, along the side of their bodies. Check out this link for some great pictures and info on that.
It sounds like you did your best but nature just took its course. (I would advise leaving it outside so that it doesn’t stink up your place and also so that it can decompose and at least provide a meal for other creatures).