#1814 - Anestia ombrophanes - Clouded Footman (a family portrait)
I’ve posted a photo of the adult male, before, WAY back, but here’s a photo that includes most stages of their lifecycle.
Clouded Footman moths can have wings, if they’re male, or be big grey fuzzy sausages if they’re female. That’s the female at the left. She’s wingless, and will lay her eggs on the cage she built from her own hair, back when she was a caterpillar ready to pupate. That’s the cage the two adults are sitting on, and she’s already laid quite a few. Inside the cage you can not only see her cast-off caterpillar skin the shrivelled dark object at right), but also her empty pupal case.
The caterpillars are black with a complex pale yellow pattern on each segment, including two thin pale yellow lines running the length of the body. They also have a row of orange spots along each flank, and bundles of long fine hair pointing in most directions. It’s those hairs that the caterpillar will weave into a protective cage. They eat lichen, green single celled algae, and black cyanobacteria of the kind that grow of exposed rocks, roof shingles, and so on.
Spotted on the wall of my local games store. They certainly have drainage problems on their roof (it’s been the cause of repeated flooding inside the store itself) so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where the caterpillars were feeding.
