5/26/2023 0 Comments Bugs life caterpillar![]() The couples (or the cluster) usually stay together until dusk of the following day. There's usually a scramble to figure out who will mate with each female, and then it resolves itself into two or three, or sometimes even four moths in the cluster. In this case, two males mated with one female - this seems to happen often. Males start showing up at midnight or 1 am. The females sit still, usually at the top edge of the cage. The males get impatient to fly at dusk - I hear them flapping against the walls of the cage - and I release them. The moths usually emerge during the day, and by evening they're ready to mate. Wings are inflated now the moth gently moves its wings for an hour or so until they're dry and hardened. Just after emerging - before its wings are inflated Here's a sequence of a male moth emerging from its cocoon - May 16, 2007. They spend the winter as cocoons, and sometime in May, the adults emerge. They make their cocoons wrapped up in leaves - usually leaves that have fallen on the ground - or on the floor of their cage. For a while I stuck to oaks in the "black oak" group - Black and Red Oak, but I've also fed them White and Burr Oak and they don't seem to care.Ī later instar, just after shedding its skin Like other Giant Silk Moths, once they start eating one kind of leaf, they don't like to switch. The lists I've seen include: Ash, Birch, Grapes, Hickory, Maple, Oak, Pine, and Cherry. Polyphemus caterpillars can eat the leaves of many different trees and shrubs. Some of the eggs I pried off of the walls The dark brown patch is the "glue" that cements them to the surface. Here are some eggs that the female, who escaped from her cage, laid all over the walls of our porch. I kept some of the eggs, and I've been raising and releasing Polyphemus moths ever since. ![]() I kept it over the winter, and in the spring, when it hatched, it turned out to be a female. A few years ago some friends found a large Polyphemus moth caterpillar on the ground on one of our paths.Īfter a few days it made a cocoon. Polyphemus Moths are common here in west-central Wisconsin, but for a long time I had never seen any. ![]()
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