#anthelids

[rattyexplores]

✥ Unknown Anthelid caterpillar

Very similar in appearence to Anthela inornata.

27/08/20 - Cairns Botanical Gardens

[anthelid-day]

My husband took this video of one of the grandbabies, who we have called Polar Bear when he was still new. He is currently in his final instar! I will be posting photos of Polar Bear in the future, and we have a video of him shedding his skin. 

We were able to track this one as being ‘Polar Bear’ because it had an extrovert personality and was bigger than the others. It liked to explore. As the others died off (explanation why will be in future post), this one was easier and easier for us to track. 

Note: I say ‘he’ because Polar Bear has been hard pin down what gender he is, so we will have to wait until he is a moth. 

[anthelid-day]

4 male eyespot Anthelids and 1 mystery moth (who came through our window so we brought it along too) got released into the clean countryside today where we get our caterpillars. We find them, raise them at our home and then release where we found them. The males in the picture got nervous in the car ride so they acted like they were dead, but after we released them they were very happy. We discovered 200 eggs in our usual release site from the females we released last time with a male, so we are keeping an eye on these eggs in the wild to see if they're fertilised. They should hatch soon. This past season has been a good season with a noticeable increase in the population after a year of us raising and releasing. It makes us very proud!

[anthelid-day]

Two of our caterpillars working on their cocoons, one more developed than the other but you can still see through it and see the caterpillar working. The net they’re building it on belonged to a caterpillar who didn’t quite know how to cocoon, and after 2 days of trying and us trying to set up grass in the area to help, it passed away mysteriously. Since then, four cocoons were built on the net.