Caterpillar ID anyone?

[itsmyp4rty]

Heard - yes heard! this enormous caterpillar rummaging through the dead leaves under one of our bushes. Can anyone tell me what it is? Please, please let it be something more exciting than the cabbage white and saw fly caterpillars I normally get!

Privet hawk moth

Thanks! That makes sense as we are surrounded by privet!

It's the largest hawk moth in the U.K. so you're very lucky!

(Hawk moth caterpillars are the only caterpillars I recognise too )

It's a pretty cool looking caterpillar too!

Saw flies have larvae not caterpillars

That would make sense to me but apparently they are caterpillars (they certainly look like caterpillars):
Caterpillars are the larval form of several insect groups, including moths, butterflies and sawflies.

The authoritative Field Guide to Caterpillars and their Foodplants has a plate showing larvae commonly confused with caterpillars- many of which are saw flies. It’s to do with the number of pseudolegs

it probably depends on whether you are a Lepidopterist

Wow, what a beauty!

I bet really that lepidopterists just don't want anything to do with saw flies 😁I can't blame them.

He looks like a George to me!

Aww he has a name! I hope he gets to become a moth and hasn't been gobbled up by the birds!

I wonder when he gets a sex? Butterflies have male and female forms, so I guess moths do too. But is sex passed on the same way as we do? That would be a big assumption. In which case does a caterpillar have a sex.

Right, I’ve got the answer. It seems that caterpillars do have a sex, in other words sex is something settled at birth and carried on through caterpillar, pupa and moth. But most caterpillars aren’t sexually dimorphic, they don’t have physical characteristics that allow you to sex them. You have to wait till sex organs have been created during pupation.

However, caterpillars of species that are strongly dimorphic are often dimorphic, for example later stages of a male caterpillar may be a different colour from the later stages of a female caterpillar

A fine beastie! Most likely looking for the best place to plot up for winter now, so you could get the unmistakeable sound of a small helicopter flying around next summer 🐛

That's actually quite pretty. I almost had a heart attack last week when this thing came wiggling across my garden.

That’s an Elephant Hawk Moth - it turns into possibly the most beautiful of the hawk moths

Very interesting - but the poor thing doesn't know whether he's Arthur or Martha 😂

Ooh that's a cool one too!

Now I'm jealous!

There was an elephant hawk moth caterpillar walking across the car park at swimming class a few weeks ago. It was huge. The cat brought in an elephant hawk moth a few months ago. It was a really vivid pink. Unfortunately cat got it before I could rescue it.