#tobacco hornworm

[onenicebugperday]

do you have anything neat to share about tobacco hornworms? I got kinda mad at the ones that ate a bunch of my tomato plants' foliage.

They can certainly be destructive! But that's because caterpillars are designed to be eating machines. Gotta get very fat and happy before pupating into adults.

Tobacco hornworms have a special place in my heart since I raised several generations from egg to moth.

Tobacco hornworms are the larval stage of the Carolina sphinx moth, which is relatively large and very pretty!

Lorge. Photos by cassie169, nanofishology, and muir

They remind me a lot of death's head moths, which are some of my favorite species, and which tragically are not available to raise in the US.

In typical sphinx fashion, they feed from flowers and look like hummingbirds when flying, though this species is nocturnal so you likely won't see them flying around in the daytime.

Photo by kim_fleming

In the wild the caterpillars are green because of the yellow plant pigments they eat, but when you raise them in captivity on an artificial diet, they are bright blue, which is EXCELLENT.

Photos by sambiology and via bigappleherp

The caterpillars can make cute clicking noises to scare away predators. Adults can squeak! Or squirt you with a defensive fluid.

Idk if anyone else will think this is cute but their poop looks like little grenades:

Photo via southeasternoutdoors

Once the caterpillars are fat and happy enough, they burrow into the ground to pupate.

They may be destructive in gardens, but captive raised caterpillars are used in biomedical science labs for a whole bunch of different things (including neurobiology!) and of course they are hugely popular in the reptile pet trade as feeders.

Also.......they are precious and I love them :')

[deep-space-lines]

The Saga of Blunt

So my mom found this massive beautiful bastard (tobacco hornworm) on her tomato plants this morning and she doesn't want to release him because he will devour her tomatoes (fair enough) but I don't have the heart to kill him so uh... he's mine now. His legal name is Cigar but his friends call him Blunt. Everyone say hi to Blunt

He is already Very Very Large so I think he's only a few days away from pupating, in the meantime I shall do my best to care for him and feed him potatoes until he becomes a big beautiful moth. I will keep y'all posted on the saga of Blunt whether you like it or not

[gorjee-art]

Woke up to another silly man eating all our tomato leaves, threw him over another patch of pretty tasty leaves. Gonna be a beautiful moth one day.

[clannfearrunt]

The worm has moved to the bigger buffalo bur... very good at munching

[attacus-atlas-moth]

I raised 2 caterpillars--in the dark to see if it would affect their growth--for school. Since tobacco hornworms will stay in their pupal stage longer when raised with less light I hypothesized that they would grow slower than the rest of the classes caterpillars which were raised in the light.

This mostly seemed to be the case. My caterpillars molted slower than the rest of the class's did. One caterpillar is not enough to make any sort of conclusion about this, but it was intriguing. I'm curious if anyone has done similar things or knows studies on the topic.

Tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta)

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui)

[punkgardener]

@thethingything hey here's the upclose picture of the apparent tobacco horn worms, tell me what you think

He's kinda crunched so if you need another picture let me know, beautiful eye spots though 😍

[monstera-tea]

Tobacco hornworm buddy I found at work :>

[zombeaversrule]

[bugswithcasey]

💚🐛Tobacco horned worms 🐛 💚

I’ve had these guys for five days now!! There starting to get big!!

[imabug]

Tobacco hornworm

Found a bunch of these big fat green caterpillars monching away on the jalapeno plants. Google image search identified them as tobacco hornworms (manduca sexta). Plucked about 6 of hornworms off the jalapeno plants (they have a pretty good grip for something so squishy) and flung them out into the road where at least 3 of them ended up getting squashed by passing traffic. The caterpillars…

[floweralleyblog-blog]

A Red Horn and Grenades

I plant ground cherries for my chipmunk, Stubby. He enjoys climbing the plant and picking his own snack. Stubby leaves the wrappers under the plant, so I know he has been there. Tobacco Hornworm has a red horn at rear I spied someone else snacking on the ground cherry this morning.A Tobacco Hornworm is devouring the delicate ends of the ground cherry limbs. The hornworm leaves his grenade-like…

[csolarstorm]

Today, on bugs I found:

HORNWORMS. THE BEST WORMS. You got tomatoes? You might have hornworms! They're the biggest, cutest, softest little foliage tubes to ever sport a little butt horn.

BEHOLD.

And there's a baby hornworm! Look at the little guy with his big ol' horn half the size of his body! What are you gonna do with that, little guy? Are you gonna scare some predators with that thing? Yes you are!

And there's more! It's the middle of summer and our backyard is teeming. Here's the katydid on the glass door. Might be missing a leg?

There be spiders next. But if you can get through the spiders, there's one more.

There's what seems to be an orb weaver in my petunias? Except she's not moving a lot, and she's clinging to this stem. I was able to pluck out a looper caterpillar that was right next to her, and she didn't react much.

The second one is next to the door, and Google is calling it a "false widow". It bites, but meh, its heart isn't in it like the "real" widows.

Lastly...the mantis in my fuschias stand tall! Mantis buddy has grown so much. They stand above many defeated spiders who are no longer a threat to their stature. Aphids flee in their presence. Prosper, mantis buddy! Protect the fuschias!

[tenth-sentence]

In tomato, at least three different MAPKs are required to fully activate defenses against tobacco hornworm caterpillars.

"Plant Physiology and Development" int'l 6e - Taiz, L., Zeiger, E., Møller, I.M., Murphy, A.

[punkgardener]

One hornworm has gone underground. I can't wait to see when he comes back up

[sigmastolen]

more pics bc i clambered around amongst the plants after closing!

mantises, still coupled hours later. they're having an entire insect lost weekend apparently

the biggest fucking tomato worm i've ever seen holy crap (with my hand behind it to force my camera to focus)

and another big tomato worm, this one with larger spots and some kind of stain

and a clump of large milkweed bugs bc they're freaks

my praying mantis friend at work has taken a lover

[bugswithcasey]

Hello bug lovers of tumbler! Today I’m going to show you step by step how to set up a enclosure for raising tobacco horned worms! (Also knows as tomato horned worms)

First things first get yourself some kind of container , this can be a tank large Tupperware container, rubber made totes and other things like that.

For me I’m going to be using this 15 ish gallon tank;

2)

Now I'm going to add a line or damp paper towels

3)

Add your soil! a lot of the times when people raise horned worms as food they will just stop at the towels, however tobacco horned worms like to burrow in the dirt especially when cocooning!

The dirt can be from outside or purchased, just make sure if you are getting your dirt from outside there are no other bugs in the soil, I also tried to get as many of the roots and such out when getting outside soil.

4)

sticks!

They love to climb! So I like to add in some sticks so that they can climb to there little hearts content! I also tape this plastic mesh thing to the side of the tank as another thing for them to climb, you can find these in basically any crafting isle.

5)

Now of cores, food!! Tomato's, potatoes, broccoli, plant stems, lettuce, these guys eat almost any kind of plant!!

6)

This is mostly optional but I like to put a light above mine, warmth and it makes them easy see!!

7)

Add your worms!! This is my favorite part!!

Then boom! you have yourself a nice enclosure to raise some Hawk Moths in! Good luck on bug raising you're Horned worms everyone!!

Remember to do you're own research before jumping into moth raising!!!!