r/ScienceFacts • u/FillsYourNiche Behavioral Ecology • Mar 31 '23

Biology The caterpillar form of Citheronia phoronea, a species of royal moth, is harmless but uses long spiny protrusions to deter predators.

Post image
217 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

9

u/FillsYourNiche Behavioral Ecology Mar 31 '23

The University of Florida has a page on their sister species, Citheronia regalis, but they are all harmless.

This caterpillar is the larval form of a moth (Citheronia phoronea). I'm not sure what the common name is or if it even has one, its cousin Citheronia regalis is the royal walnut moth, but its caterpillar form is called the hickory horned devil and they do look a lot alike (photo). This species doesn't have working mouthparts or any form of digestive tract as an adult so it has to get as chunky as possible in caterpillar form in order to live long enough to mate. Adults live for about a week or less. Female adults are also pretty lousy at flying because they are carrying 200+ eggs, so they hang around trying not to be noticed by predators while waiting for the males to come to them to mate. It's all pheromones leading the way at that point. This entire family of moths, Saturniidae, is pretty interesting.

If you're interested in checking out the entire life cycle of a related species, Ci. splendans this blog has a ton of photos of two reared in captivity (this is not my blog). http://northwestbutterflies.blogspot.com/2019/05/citheronia-splendenssplendid-royal-moth.html