I realized I better feed the Pipevine cats one more time before it gets dark so I went out to pick some leaves. I realized I left my camera inside so I did my best imitation of a horse with blinders on. Just walk straight to the pipevine, don't look at anything else! But I had a couple of surprises on the pipevine! First, I found a cat that was probably third instar. He's about the same size as the smaller cats I have in the big tank. So I added him to them. Then, low down on the plant, I saw a much smaller caterpillar. I could see that he had molted, but I wasn't sure he was okay. I nudged him with my fingernail and he moved around so I brought him in, too.
I decided to put the little guy with the eggs and cat I found earlier today. Most caterpillars are fine cohabitating, but I like to keep them separated by size for convenience. So as I opened the container, I saw that all three Pipevine cats have now hatched!
As for the little guy I found, you can see his old head capsule on the left and his shed skin on the right. When he's ready, he'll turn around and eat the shed skin.
I'm currently laughing at my tank of the larger Pipevine cats. Pipevine and Polydamas Swallowtail cats love eating the stem of the plant. So much so, that the Polydamas were chewing the stems and letting all the leaves fall to the ground which is a massive waste of food. That's just one reason I raise them inside. When I pick leaves, I try to get as much stem as I can. It's just funny to see the caterpillars go into attack mode and start chewing it right away. Must be meatier and more nutritious than the leaf. Here's a couple shots I took of one earlier. It's kind of dark because I was sitting in the kitchen.
As far as I know, they eat oaks because they fall out of the oak trees and then wander around spinning their cocoons on everything. They can cause dermatitis in some people so they are generally considered "bad". Several years back, it got to the point where we had so many it was like a plague. I actually sprayed BT very cautiously around the oaks - in the lower limbs and in the grass around them where the caterpillars fall. I also went on a rampage with a stick and my shoe. That knocked back their numbers by a lot, but they can still be a pest.
