#american dagger moth caterpillar

[breadhalfburnt]

currently on a hike and found a critter!!

[lousyadult-vinyls]

Fresh set of lashes

[abstractsnail]

Target Spotted

[onenicebugperday]

@muma-kitty submitted: a couple of fuzzy babies, a cute beetle rescued from my brother's room, one angel freshly peeled, and a fly that was so big i thought it was a moth at first - all found in michigan

All really nie! I hope the cicada emerged successfully and went on to make 9000 baby cicadas. The huge fly is a tiger bee fly btw. Interesting little critters.

[casually-salad]

i dont think i posted this boy i drew.. (( american dagger moth caterpillar ))

[delopsia]

Jar of shame

Tw: bug/caterpillar below the cut

Little buddy kept running beneath the lawn mower, so now he's in timeout until he's no longer at risk of being chopped up 😭

[flufflecat]

found a friend in the backyard and have named him Bill

[scoutingthetrooper]

american dagger moth caterpillar aka Hairy Harry

[mchi22]

UNIDENTIFIED FUCKING THING

[wolsalwastaken]

My headcanons for the species of the bishops (+ bonus headcannons):

Leshy is an American dagger moth caterpillar, his little black spiky things and fluffy green appearance all match up with it. Since he’s clearly an adult, but is also stuck as a caterpillar, my headcanon is that his godhood prevented him from fully aging, as he was a caterpillar when being granted his power. He also can read in braille, however he is dyslexic, so he’s not very good at it.

Heket is a Cane Toad. Since Cane Toads are prevalent in Australia and are known for having an incredibly large appetite (and incredibly large size), I’d bet actual money that that’s what she was based off. Also yes, she canonically is a toad she isn’t a frog guys. It’s also incredibly painful for her to speak, even after her being healed, so she chooses to communicate through sign language most of the time.

Narinder is an Egyptian Mau, the first ever species of domestic cat (they also are often black in color). I also dreamt that he’s ambidextrous so that’s now a headcanon I have, idk my subconscious projected it onto him. Maybe it’s bc I myself am ambidextrous, or maybe I’m just weird.

Kallamar is a vampire squid, since vampires are blamed for the spread of disease, plus vampire squids have lil ears + a big ass forehead, it just makes sense to me. Since Kallamar is either partially or entirely deaf, he can communicate through speech but can only receive information through sign language. Him and Heket have the easiest time communing.

Shamura is a regal jumping spider, as seen with their bright coloration and big eyes. They use post-it notes to remind themself of things, however 90% of the time the notes are entirely unhelpful 1-word clues. Sometimes Leshy will intentionally mess with them by leaving fake notes.

Anyways just wanted to share my headcanons for them bc I want to, idk. Hope you’ve enjoyed them- if anyone’s wondering why I got oddly specific with species it’s bc I’m a biology major and animal nerd.

(Pictured below are the animals I hc them as, in order of mention)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

A respectable writing day in spite of its attempts to sabotage my efforts. I got in 4,220 words today, and The Everyday Naturalist manuscript sits at 62,922. I likely won't get any writing done tomorrow as I need to catch up on other things, but Thursday is set aside as another writing day.

On the bright side, the three sample fungus templates are done and I've gotten a great start on the troubleshooting chapter (to include a discussion on whether the fuzzy caterpillar above will turn into an American dagger moth or a cottonwood dagger moth.) I'm hoping to have that done by the end of the week so I can start next week with the Citizen Science chapter, and then hopefully jump into back matter before the week ends.

[cantankerouscatfish]

danger worm. :) american dagger moth larva.

the hairs on certain fuzzy caterpillars can sometimes cause skin irritation if you're not careful. so be careful.

[paledoptera]

Glad you liked the snowberry clearwing suggestion! Big flashy ones like a lot of saturniids are somewhat hard to come by here (one of the more notable instances I've been able to find is the time someone found a cecropia cocoon in the woods and it ended up on the news because nobody who saw it initially knew what it Was lmao), so we've got a lot of smaller, less distinct (or at least less well known) ones - That clearwing is probably the most unique of them, but there's some others that are relatively notable, I think!

We've got a few sphinx moths - While at the mall this past summer, I had an encounter with a lettered sphinx, namely one with a reddish spot on the back like the one in sighting 1347349 on butterfliesandmoths (dot) org, but I would argue the one that leaves the most impression after the clearwing is the white-lined sphinx! They're another one that's fairly commonly referred to as a hummingbird moth, despite not being closely related to the hummingbird hawk-moth of Eurasia - A lot of sphinx moths around here have similar sizes and flight patterns to hummingbirds and also tend to hover around flowers when feeding, so they're all largely lumped in as "hummingbird moths" by casual observers, but the white-lined sphinx is probably the one most commonly referred to as such.

Outside of the sphinx moths, a REALLY distinct family we have here are the plume moths - They have a frankly bizarre shape to them, with a long, thin body almost more resembling a dragonfly than a moth in shape, and long, thin wings near the front of the body, so that, when at rest, they form an almost T shape. There's a few different species here, but the most common one I've seen is the morning glory plume moth - There's usually one or two hanging out on my front door during the warm months at night! Weird little dudes, they give me robber fly "what the fuck is that??? what IS that?????" vibes.

As far as smaller, less distinct moths go, there's a few here that are better known for their status as caterpillars than the moths themselves - We have both Isabella tiger moths and Virginian tiger moths here, better known as the wooly bear and yellow wooly bear in their larval forms, respectively! There's also the American dagger moth, which has a rather nondescript appearance as an adult, but a very distinct one in its larval form! As caterpillars, they've got a very dark face, and are covered in pretty vivid yellow yellow hairs, with a few black tufts that resemble spikes - There are some reports of skin irritation from their hairs, but they're seemingly non-venomous!

Another moth larvae that causes skin irritation, this time due to their hairs being toxic to humans, is the brown-tail moth! They're not native to the US, but there is a population in New England after they were introduced, and they've been particularly widespread where I live for the past decade - In 2018, the front wall of my then-workplace was absolutely COVERED in the adult moths, which are white with, as the name implies, brown tails (sometimes bordering on reddish). A few of them actually made their way into the building, and I brought them back outside - Interestingly, they lose the toxins in their hairs after they pupate, so adults don't cause a rash the way the caterpillars do! They used to be significantly more widespread through eastern North America, but they've declined for... not-fully-clear reasons, but one theory suggests that their population was suppressed by parasitic fly species introduced to counter ANOTHER introduced moth, the spongy moth (Whose scientific name is lymantria dispar! The name spongy moth is a relatively new one for it, so you may find more documentation using its scientific name than its common one. It was formerly known by another common name, but that name also happens to include a slur, so! I'm gonna make the choice to Not include that here 👍👍👍)! They've got some neat sexual dimorphism going on - In addition to the relatively common antennae size difference, males are a light brownish color, while females are a rather bright white with sort of rippled brown striping on the wings! I personally think the females stand out as more flashy than the males, which is neat to see, as someone who also gets a kick out of birds, where the opposite is often true - Usually in birds males are the ones with the more flashy plumage, or at the very least, females tend to have more spotted or mottled colorations in species with dimorphism, to help keep them more hidden while nesting. Even species with relatively little dimorphism beyond size tend to display this pattern - Common barn owls, for instance, can often be differentiated by spotting on the breast and the color of the feathering around the facial disc, where females tend to have heavier black spotting than males (whose breasts are often white with no spotting at all, though they get speckling occasionally) and also have darker facial disc feathers. (I follow an artist in the UK who has livestreams of the raptors that use the nest boxes in his garden, and he works alongside a rehabber who visits when their hatchlings get old enough - Some of the species he has are hard to differentiate even as adults by visual alone, but for barn owls, those are the standard ways of sexing owlets when they're getting their ID rings. But that's getting a bit off topic lol)

Anyway, the male spongy moths veer a bit in to LBJ territory, to borrow a birding term (LBJ stands for "little brown job" and is sometimes used by birders to refer to those fairly common brown birds that are difficult to distinguish - Trying to tell sparrows apart at a glance, for example), which is where a lot of the other moths here fall into. A lot of them aren't especially distinct, often various browns and greys - I'd say even that lettered sphinx I mentioned at the start probably falls into that territory if you're not as Normal About Bugs And Birds As Me. We do have one seemingly-LBJ moth that stands out off the top of my head, though - Amphipyra pyramidoides, or the copper underwing of the US (a distinct species from the copper underwing of the palaearctic), looks like a pretty unremarkable LBJ when its wings are folded up at rest, but as the name implies, the underwings have a distinct copper color that can be seen with their wings outstretched! Underwing moths have a bunch of species with that trait of colorful lower wings, highly recommend poking through them if you have a chance.

Anyway, that's a bit long, so TLDR: I'm Just A Touch Autistic and had a bit too much time at work with the snow this morning keeping customers away and yelling about moths is how I opted to spend the slow day, I suppose bfnfngmdngndn No pressure to read all of that if you haven't already, or to respond to it, naturally! I just get a kick out of cramming excessive amounts of words about bbugs (and bbirds) through my ISP's wires haha. Thanks again for the moths, and I'm glad to hear you're recovering well! And I gotta say, even if they're intended as a sort of quicker and easier, tiding things over while you're sick solution between the more detailed pieces (which are Very Good, for the record), I also love the ms paint moffs tbh. Iconic.

i don't know who you are anon but i love you thank you for putting an entire ass essay about moths in my inbox i knew about a lot of these species (because i'm a nerd who does a lot of research about shit) but i didn't actually know about plume moths!! they look really cool, def gonna draw them at some point.

they remind me of like, dragon wings or bat wings

[bisonaari]

My little low-key hobby is finding cool bugs when I go on walks and identifying them, here's the coolest one I've seen this year!!!

As far as I can tell from google it is an evergreen bagworm moth, they make these cases around themselves out of silk and leaf/evergreen needle fragments !! I saw this guy on the sidewalk next to a bunch of his friends and I thought they were weird twigs until they started moving but yeah I think they're so cool :D

I AM SO JEALOUS RN I HAVE NEVER SEEN A BAGWORM MOTH IN PERSON!! They're so cool omg 😭😭💚💚

My personal faves to see on walks here is the caterpillar of the american dagger moth

LOOK AT THE FLOOF

[daveatkinson]

Lil American dagger moth caterpillar ooching across my yard.

[abstract-hellbender]

Hey folks !! Doing something new right now. I've always meant to post the silly critters I've found while out and about, I've just never gotten around to it 😭😭 I'll try to ID the animals in my pics, though feel free to correct me if I get any wrong 😈😈 I'm posting insects here and I'll post the snakes n frogs next.

First off is this American Dagger Moth caterpillar. I don't recommend touching them - their bristles irritate skin ☹️ This guy was chill though.

Heres a MASSIVE praying mantis, I think a Chinese mantis? This guy was BIG, maybe about 6 or 7 inches long. Very calm, flew away into a tree after I took this pic.

Here's a SUPER SLAY cicada, either an Eastern Scissor Grinder or some Dog Day Cicada? I'm not really sure - this guy has a funky pattern. It let me get incredibly close (a FOOT AWAY IM SERIOUS)

Here are a WHOLE BUNCH of pics I took when the 17 year cicadas came out around 2 years ago. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever experienced in my life (so SO loud, but so fucking cool. THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!!! First time a cicada flew into my shirt also 😎😎😎) I LOOOOVE cicadas they're one of my favourite animals of all time 😭😭😭😭😭

Finally, the coolest damn guy I've ever seen in my life - a polyphemus moth. A POLYPHEMUS MOTH. Literally the coolest moth I have a picture of. It was MASSIVE. Such a beautiful moth 😭😭😭😭