Monday, September 10, 2012

Piper and Tara id a caterpillar at lunch


It's  Antheraea polyphemus, the caterpillar of the Polyphemus moth. Named, I suppose, not for the cyclops Polyphemus, but for the Argonaut. The moth has two distinctive eyespots so it wouldn't make sense to name it after a cyclops. The caterpillar is cool though. Wikipedia claims that, newly hatched, they can eat 86,000 their weight in leaves. Damn.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! What a gorgeous caterpillar! I do miss those lunchtime chats and debates :)