Lappet & Snout Moths at Amaroo, ACT
Identification history
| Lasiocampidae (family) immature | 12 Mar 2022 | ibaird | ||
| Lasiocampidae (family) immature | 12 Mar 2022 | donhe | ||
| Dasypodia cymatodes | 11 Mar 2022 | chriselidie |
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User's notes
Last year I saw 10-20 of these caterpillars on a different (adjacent to this one) acacia in our backyard. Earlier this year a newly hatched northern old lady moth emerged at the base of that tree (one of my earlier posts). I don't have any solid proof of this, only a strong hunch that this is the caterpillar of the above moth. It is motionless all day, but walks around the tree at night.
5 comments
donhe
wrote:
12 Mar 2022
Catocalinae caterpillars in general are hairless. Anyway, photos of only a few Lasiocampidae species have been published, so it would be really good if you could rear this in captivity to try and get an adult moth which we could identify.
chriselidie
wrote:
13 Mar 2022
Wow, what a surprise! I really thought it was the old lady moth again. There you go, you really need solid evidence. Now that I see the Lasiocampidae pictures, I agree some of them are a really good match.
Raising the caterpillar would be a great idea, but... We were going away and I didn't want to leave it alone in a glass jar. Also, it likes sitting flattened against a tree trunk during the day, and our acacias (pot plants) are too young to provide that sort of wood. I haven't yet worked out how to arrange for this.
Another problem is that I went out one night with a torch to watch it move around the tree, and that must have upset it as I couldn't find it the next day. But what I learnt is that it is much more round and caterpillar like when active, it has small hair bundles at each foot and around the snout and two deep, almost black "cracks" (across) in its skin near the head. It wasn't eating anything but "sensing" with its snout around the leaves and the surrounding air.
Anyway, I will check when we're back home if I can find it again or not.
Raising the caterpillar would be a great idea, but... We were going away and I didn't want to leave it alone in a glass jar. Also, it likes sitting flattened against a tree trunk during the day, and our acacias (pot plants) are too young to provide that sort of wood. I haven't yet worked out how to arrange for this.
Another problem is that I went out one night with a torch to watch it move around the tree, and that must have upset it as I couldn't find it the next day. But what I learnt is that it is much more round and caterpillar like when active, it has small hair bundles at each foot and around the snout and two deep, almost black "cracks" (across) in its skin near the head. It wasn't eating anything but "sensing" with its snout around the leaves and the surrounding air.
Anyway, I will check when we're back home if I can find it again or not.
donhe
wrote:
13 Mar 2022
If you read the pages linked from
http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au/lasi/lasi-cats.html
you will see that many caterpillars in Lasiocampidae have a display of two black bands behind the thorax.
Caterpillars happily adapt to anything to sit on. A short stick is fine. They can walk at 1cm/second = 36 mtrs/hr , so overnight: can move too far to find again. You need to capture a caterpillar when you find it. Yours looks quite large, so it is probably mature, and if left in a bottle with a fabric top held by an elastic band, will probably happily pupate, and need no further care for a week or two, or maybe longer, when the adult moth might emerge.
http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au/lasi/lasi-cats.html
you will see that many caterpillars in Lasiocampidae have a display of two black bands behind the thorax.
Caterpillars happily adapt to anything to sit on. A short stick is fine. They can walk at 1cm/second = 36 mtrs/hr , so overnight: can move too far to find again. You need to capture a caterpillar when you find it. Yours looks quite large, so it is probably mature, and if left in a bottle with a fabric top held by an elastic band, will probably happily pupate, and need no further care for a week or two, or maybe longer, when the adult moth might emerge.
chriselidie
wrote:
16 Mar 2022
Thanks for the extra info, donhe - that's very useful to know! I'm back in Canberra now and have been looking for the moth, but sadly it seems that it has indeed walked off, possibly to pupate somewhere. So I missed out on that one. But I found a new candidate in our garden, and he will be there for my caterpillar raising experiment instead.
Location information
- Places Amaroo, ACT
Sighting information
- 1 Abundance
- 9 Mar 2022 06:59 PM Recorded on
- chriselidie Recorded by
Additional information
- Acacia Associated plant
- None. Associated Insect
- 50mm or larger Animal size
- Unknown Gender
- Larvae Breeding behaviour
Species information
- Lasiocampidae (family) immature Scientific name
- Lappet & Snout Moths Common name
- Not Sensitive
- Local native
- Non-Invasive
- Up to 1672.6m Recorded at altitude
- Machine learning
- External link More information
Record quality
- Images or audio
- More than one media file
- Confirmed by an expert moderator
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- GPS evidence of location
- Description
- Additional attributes
