{"id":2044271,"date":"2018-07-17T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=3ace5735366a86777a93728e19cd1a27"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:58:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T06:58:56","slug":"caterpillar-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/caterpillar-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"Caterpillar Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who lives nearby posted a picture on Facebook of a caterpillar like the one above. What a cool caterpillar! Was I ever jealous!<\/p>\n

Then a few days later this one showed up at my place. So, yay! I got my own! It’s the caterpillar of the white-marked tussock moth, Orgyia leucostigma.<\/p>\n

It has four humps of bristles on its back, two flashy “horns” on its (red) head end, and a tufted “tail.”<\/p>\n

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Male white-marked tussock moth caterpillars eventually become grey moths with a white spot on each forewing. No surprises there. But females are wingless and flightless. The female has a swollen abdomen and stays near her empty cocoon to mate when a flying male arrives. She lays her eggs nearby. I’m combing the plants where I found this caterpillar in search of such a female. If I find one, you’ll see it here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who lives nearby posted a picture on Facebook of a caterpillar like the one above. What a cool caterpillar! Was I ever jealous! Then a few days later this one showed up at my place. So, yay! I got my own! It’s the caterpillar of the white-marked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2148996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[4391,9545,9544],"class_list":["post-2044271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-moth-caterpillars","tag-orgyia-leucostigma","tag-white-marked-tussock-moth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2044271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}