What is this beast?

[Spinnymop]

Found this behemoth in the garden today. Can anyone identify it? It was absolutely huge and very strong! It kept flicking its tail around whenever dd held it (I kept my distance as it was terrifying).

Looks like hawk moth caterpillar, agrius convolvuli 🐛

Cool! Im kff to put it jn seek!

Yes, convolvulus hawk moth
Seek didn't work but google lens did www.uksafari.com/convolvulushawkmoths.htm

Ooh ! What a brilliant beastie !

That's an absolute corker! Does it have a fringe or is that it's arse facing the camera in the first pic?

Oh, it's beautiful!

I adore hawk moths and their caterpillars, they're so interesting.

This doesn't look like a hawk moth caterpillar to me (or are there different ones?) we get them in our garden and they are no where this big and look like they have eyes on the side.

That is its face! The arse end had the spike.

There are different hawk moths & hence different caterpillars.
We had a hummingbird hawk moth in the garden last week.

They start small and get bigger. Yours sound like Elephant Hawk Moth.

@Spinnymop Try not to hold caterpillars between finger and thumb. They’re not that strong, you don’t want to risk internal injuries.

What a beauty! I hope it found a safe place to pupate :)