Day 32: nothing

Unfortunately, we won't be seeing any of the pupating process. :(

The cocoon is way to thick. Still, pretty cool to be able to see even that!

So for now, we just wait. These caterpillars shouldn't be maturing until spring but given the high temperatures, I fear they might come out sooner. We shall see...

Day 21: cocoon is thickening

I was very excited about maybe being able to have a peek into what happens when the caterpillar wraps itself into its hiding place... but it doesn't seem to be showing much. This is all I can see through the glass:

Day 20: building a chrysalis on the glass

The little caterpillar decided to build a cocoon attached to the glass! This is most fascinating. It seems to be building a protective dome using balls of soil, and glueing them together with silk. Maybe we'll be able to watch the whole process through the glass!

Day 19: Time to roll up!

In the morning I woke to find the big caterpillar restlessly pacing around the jar:



I knew what was going on. But I wondered if it would roll up into a leaf, dig itself into the soil or hang on a branch.

I had the answer by the evening:



Rolled up in the dirt. Invisible! :D

Day 18 - munching away

Final instars! Munching away ferociously. I did no sound editing to this video whatsoever ;)



Here's what they look like on a scale now. Roughly 2,5-3cm long, and pretty fat!

Day 16 - clean up after yourself

I watched this behaviour for a while yesterday. The caterpillars seem to tidy up after themselves? They pick up their poop and throw it away. One of them was doing it for 10 minutes straight yesterday, until it completely cleared the leaf it was sitting on.

Anyway this was Day16. The caterpillar in the video is the large one. It changed instar overnight, so now it is larger and black again.

Day 15 - pinkness revealed

I think now I'm certain- before they change instar, they go pink!

Small caterpillar - yesterday it was pink, then it changed its skin. Today it is green again.

Small caterpillar

Large caterpillar - turning pink, about to change instar!

Large caterpillar is 2cm long while standing still with that hump in the middle. When it stretches, I think it goes up to 3.

Day 14: One goes forward, one goes backward

Day 14: When I put the big caterpillar in front of my usual lens with three macro rings today, this is what I got:

I had to remove a few rings to widen my angle, in order to capture it.


The little caterpillar on the other hand, seems to have regressed, colour-wise? How is that even possible.

Here is the scale of things now:

Big caterpillar is shaping up! Roughly 5mm growth in 2 days.

The small caterpillar has grown a few mm but it's turning seethrough and pink again?

Big difference between the two right now

And just for fun, here's a few "portraits" of the big one:

Caterpillar bum bum :D

Day 12: catching up

Day 12: After being pink the whole day yesterday, this morning the little caterpillar started looking more like the big one. Although the size difference remains.

Small caterpillar

Big caterpillar

And a couple more portraits of the little one :)

Nice fangs!!

Day 11: And yet another instar

Day 11: this catterpillar is changing clothes like a model on a runway.

No, that's not a piece of caterpillar that fell off. Well, ok it is, in a way. :D

SKIN!

Say hello to the Brand New Fattie:

Ok, well, the little one seems to have grown *a little* as well but more importantly it seems to have changed colour back to pink again?

I wish I knew what that meant... if anything?

Real nettles are hard to find

I used to think nettles were everywhere. They're weeds, right? You need to work hard to get rid of them!
Well, sort of.

When these catterpillars hatched, I searched all over my gardens and neighbours' gardens. I found many things that looked like nettles, but they did not sting and the catterpillars refused to eat them.

You won't find nettles in maintained gardens or parks. You'll find them in ditches.

In some way, Urtica dioica is easy to indentify. You just give it your hand and... you know it. :)
I wish I could identify every fake nettle I've encountered, but I'm no botanical expert. In my layman terms, I reason like this:  the burn bubbles on my arm, as well as the full bellies of my caterpillars confirm what is displayed in this educational image that I took today:

Left: similar, but not what we're looking for. // Right: Stinging nettle

Caterpillar fight!

Note to myself and everyone who keeps caterpillars:

keep. them. apart.

They're not friends.

I was taking a video of the little one crawling around. It crawled up to the big one, and then this happened. It's short because I had to separate them. They are both ok. But I'll try not to let this happen again. I only have two caterpillars! I want to see them fly one day!

Day 10: New instar! (third?)

Day 10: Here we are in new instars! Still not the same size though. The larger one seems to have noticeable white strip marks on the back. The smaller one doesn't. I wonder if they might be different genders? I don't know that much about caterpillars, are their genders even defined before adulthood?

Larger caterpillar

Larger caterpillar

Larger caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

Day 8: Differences increase?

Day 8: my caterpillars are looking more and more different each day. It's almost like they're not the same species!?
But they eat the same food... and what are the odds that two moths should lay eggs at the same time in the same place on the same leaf (even though they were captured in a container) and that these eggs would hatch at the same time... and... I don't know. There must be a better explanation. Any suggestions? Let me know.

Day 7: Going pink

Day 7: although they seem to be in the more or less same instar now, one caterpillar is pinker than the other, which is more grey. The grey one is also larger.
When viewed from the left, they both seem to have the letter "C" on their cheek.

"C" for "Caterpillar" maybe? :D

Larger caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

Larger caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

They both seem pretty happy munching away on nettle leaves and pooping like little poop machines.

Day 5: Difference in development speed?

Day 5: apparently these two caterpillars are not developing at the same speed?

One seems to be in its second instar, the other one not.

Left: 2nd instar caterpillar, right: 1st instar caterpillar

Day 1: The babies!

September 23rd - here come the caterpillars!

So now we have babies, what do we feed them? Moth caterpillars are very particular about what they eat. Most species eat only one or two specific plants, otherwise - they die.

But I don't know which moth laid these eggs!
Well, if Mniotype Satura overwinters as an egg, then it's probably not this one.
Xestia might have hatched but I have no idea what plant to feed it.
If it's Abrostola, it will eat nettles. Almost all Abrostolas eat nettles.

So I went out and found a nettle and voilla! They liked it!

In this video the caterpillar is 3 days old.

I guess they are Abrostolas then, if they eat nettles?

Day 0: The mother

This story begins on September 17th 2014. A moth flew into my house, and promptly got crippled by my cat. I rescued it from the beast's claws and placed it in a safe place - my moth tank (which I normally use for photographing moths).

The moth tank. And, The Cat.

The poor moth lost one forewing in the battle, and the other one was so battered it was difficult to tell its species precisely, other than that it most certainly belongs to the Abrostola genus.

There are many moths in the Abrostola family, and the most likely ones to appear here in Croatia are Abrostola agnorista, triplasia and tripartita. They are very hard to tell apart just by the looks, and even more so when they look like this:

So I'm going to be calling this moth just - Abrostola.

Over the next few days two other moths were temporarily housed in the tank. During this time, some eggs appeared on a leaf.

Now who laid those eggs??

Was it the Mniotype satura? According to some sources, they overwinter as eggs, so they shouldn't be hatching soon.

Maybe Xestia cohaesa?
Very little info is available online for these. But according to Wikipedia, the Xestia genus moths overwinter as larvae.

Abrostolas overwinter as pupa.

Oookay.

Freshly deposited eggs

A one day old, unhatched egg

A hatched egg