glow in the dark hairy caterpillar id please???

[iminei]

another one for you boffins...medium small hairy luminescent yellow caterpillar with a black spike at the end of its tail.

no pics as was spotted after shopping at waitrose (they do have a better class of caterpillar there!!)

seems really late for a caterpillar, even one with a fur coat on!

any ideas???

[Harry Eales]

Originally Posted by iminei

another one for you boffins...medium small hairy luminescent yellow caterpillar with a black spike at the end of its tail.

no pics as was spotted after shopping at waitrose (they do have a better class of caterpillar there!!)

seems really late for a caterpillar, even one with a fur coat on!

any ideas???

Possibly the Pale Tussock Calliteara pudibunda

Harry

[iminei]

ooooh you clever thing...correctamundo!!!

is it right for this time of year?

any ideas about my enormous bellied orange (and i do mean orange) spider?

[Harry Eales]

Originally Posted by iminei

ooooh you clever thing...correctamundo!!!

is it right for this time of year?

any ideas about my enormous bellied orange (and i do mean orange) spider?

Hello iminei,

The Pale Tussock larvae are supposed to pupate before winter (according to the textbooks) but such books are not always infallible, in truth, the life cycles of many of the lepidoptera are not that well known.

Sorry I can't help you with spiders, the only time I have anything to do with them is when my female neighbour has "A large hairy dog" in her bath, that she needs removing. lol.

Harry

[JRsbugs]

I found the same caterpillar on the 11th! I was kicking some acorns off my drive which is under an Oak tree, good job I spotted it as I might have trodden on it and the acorns were shooting over the top of it!

I found it with a search for Hawk-moth as it had a purplish spike, although I wasn't sure it was a Hawk-moth. I wanted to know what it fed on so I could put it somewhere safe, although it was probably about to pupate.

I put it on a small Hazel tree I have growing on the bank of the roadside drain which is part of my garden. It kept falling off, a couple of times it grabbed a pampas grass leaf which the Hazel is growing amongst but eventually it stayed on a leaf then crawled onto an old pampas flower stem.

It went inside a sheath which had broken away from the stem and started to crawl down it. I managed to get a pic of it there from the other side of the pampas grass, which wasn't easy! I checked later and it had disappeared.

I had taken pics of this moth maybe 3 or 4 years ago but I don't have those on this computer, haven't seen it since. I just found it was 31st May 2007 when I last saw the moth!

Janet

[iminei]

i was always told if the caterpillar was hairy it was a butterfly, if smooth a moth.
last year i discovered a gargantuan smooth lime green caterpillar with a spike at the end of its tail which, i was reliably informed, an elephant hawk moth caterpillar.
i should have taken a pic/grabbed it for a good look but potatoes and the like were more on my mind!

[JRsbugs]

I have found that moth caterpillars are more likely to be the hairy ones, from what I have so far encountered anyway!

[iminei]

D'OH!!!! another bit of duff info to be forced out of the brain!

so why did my EHmoth caterpillar have such lovely smooth skin...did he use Imperial Leather????

elephant hawk moth caterpillar - Wild About Britain Pics

(will someone pleeeeaasse explain, in wirds a five year old can understand how to include images????)