Giant Leopard Moth — Something Else, too

Today, a Hypercompe Scribonia Caterpillar (who will grow into a Giant Leopard Moth someday) arrived on my sidewalk — ready for his photo shoot.

I quickly learned that he really doesn’t have big shiny bug eyes. What I thought were eyes are ‘lobes‘, and his eyes are on the lower front edge of each one. He’s got several eyes on each side.

He doesn’t have a nose, either. Instead, he has 18 nostrils along his body. Only they’re not called ‘nostrils’, they’re called ‘spiracles’. Anyway, that’s where he breathes.

There’s another spiracle — up in the right corner of the picture. It’s on his ‘4th abdominal segment’. In people, an abdomen is also called a ‘belly’. Caterpillars sort of have 10 bellies, but they’re called ‘abdominal segments‘.

We discussed his legs. He has a whole lot more of them than you and I do, even more that a dog or a cow! But not all of this caterpillar’s legs are ‘true legs‘. There are 6 of those. They’re up front near his head. Besides being on his front end, you can tell they’re true legs because they each end in a claw.

Those other legs are called ‘prolegs‘. They end in a bunch of tiny hooks called ‘crochets‘.

He has no arms, but it’s ok because all the legs kind of make up for that.

SO … on with the Photo Shoot.

The first order of business was to see just how big this guy really was. An impressive 6 centimeters! Wow! A very big caterpillar! (Just for fun, he also stretched out on a brick. He was as long as the space between 2 holes.)

He played around on the brick for awhile, but when he decided to go INTO a hole …

DISASTER STRUCK!!!!!

** When something is stuck on its back and can’t right itself, we say that it is ‘Turtled’. If something is stuck head-first in a hole, is it ‘Pillared’? **