Hi everyone,

I posted a while back asking if cankerworms were safe to eat, because I had found a cluster of eggs, hatched them in a container and thought they were cankerworms, because of their inchworm-like locomotion. Now that the caterpillars are bigger, though, I don't think that's what they are; cankerworms only have 1-2 pairs of prolegs, while these have 3 (like most other caterpillars). They also no longer move "inchworm-fashion" like when they were hatchlings. Their coloration is also changing quite a bit.

I'm attaching a pic, hopefully someone here will know what these things are? There are two caterpillars in the pic; we ended up finding a larger caterpillar somewhere in our yard and think maybe this is the same as what we hatched; so the smaller one on the bottom is one of the hatched larvae while the big one is the one we found. The eggs were light brown and laid in a cluster, all in perfect rows on an iris leaf. I don't know how many there were, maybe 100 or so. We live in Vermont, so maybe Lele, our resident bug expert, will know what they are. They've been feeding on just about every plant we've given them -- dandelion greens, curly lettuce, clovers, etc., so they're obviously not dependent on a specific host plant.



Thanks!

-----
Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com

[ Show Entire Thread ]