Will moths hybridise with others? The Polyphemus moth looks very similar to the luna's, I believe they are in the same family as well. It would be pretty sick to see hybrids between the two.
Alright I know I'm behind on updates but bare with me here. The pics are being edited, but I'm going out of town for 2 days again tonight. I'll try to get one pic ready for your guys now.
The caterpillars are doing good for the most part. I no longer have 1 that is doing perfectly, but 2. 3 still have a lot of catching up to do, so with any luck they'll be ok. They're now in their third stage. I'll have pics of stages 2 and 3 soon.
[editline]10th July 2011[/editline]
thumbnail:
[thumb]http://filesmelt.com/dl/Attack_of_the_Flesh_Eating_Potato.jpg[/thumb]
they are growing at a freakish rate now.
That was an awesome read. Never gave huge ass moths much thought until now. I rarely ever see them though. Whenever I do, it's during the day and they're not exactly in the healthiest of conditions.
Where do you live though? I mean, you caught, what, 3 or 4 different species? Your area must have a lot of them.
Hey Postal, I have a moth question I was hoping you could answer. Today I and a friend saw an American Dagger Moth caterpillar lying belly up on a sidewalk, barely moving. We were worried about it because it could easily get stepped on, and we were wondering if the heat wave had anything to do with it, so I took it home and placed it in a small plastic box with leaves that the internet said it would eat. After a while it started to move its mouth, but I didn't know what it was doing. A few hours later I check back and notice goopy stuff around its mouth, so I looked on THE INTERNET again and I read that the silk for cocoons are in a glue like form, so I'm wondering if it's beginning its cocoon. Problem is, the spot it picked is on the ground completely. Is it making a cocoon do you think, and if so is it okay if it makes one on the ground?
[editline]26th July 2011[/editline]
Also to support the cocoon theory it's been insisting on curling up and has been putting the goo on its feet now.
HEY THANK YOU For sharing!!! A week ago, Your info here was very helpful,I had one Of these majestic Moths, on My front porch screen, a female, I called my cousin to bring her bug loveing son , here Gave to him, She was laying eggs, and such, and we wanted to ask you ,what type of leaves should we use for the Babies? You use oak or maple right? How often did you change? and NO WATER? should we sprinkle some Dew on leaves? any tips You are DA MAN! thank you very VERY VERY MUCH! photos are wonderful too!
[editline]10th August 2012[/editline]
I forgot to say, THAT before I identified this Amazing thig I thought it was prehistoric! IT WAS KINDA SCAREY! HOW beutifully white "HU! and I was sad that the Wing broke asap in a container....I was going to try to save this beautiful ,First Ever seen in all my 51 years! not even read about! THAK YOU AGAIN!
Uh hello. Might as well post some shorter instructions in case anyone else finds the thread.
For figuring out what to feed them, use this page [url]http://www3.islandtelecom.com/~oehlkew/xlunlarv.htm[/url] Oak and Maple both appear to be on this page. For me I just gave them one type of leaf, but it doesn't hurt to give them a few leaves from a few types to see what they prefer.
Eggs will hatch in 1 week to 10 days so i imagine they'll be hatching any time now.
I used sweetgum for mine. I just kept the eggs in tupperware containers with holes punched in them (VERY SMALL HOLES. I used a needle to punch a lot of holes in the containers. They need air but you don't want them escaping when they hatch, either) with about 10 or so eggs in a container and kept them outside, and just kept an eye on them. When they first hatch they aren't gonna travel very far. Mine just sat next to their eggs for a good long while before they started looking for food. They generally hatch early in the morning, but can sometimes hatch a little after noon.
When they hatched I put in sweetgum leaves and after awhile they started eating. Since picked leaves don't last long you'd have to change them out every day probably, as well as clean out all the poop. Caterpillars don't need water, they get that from the leaves.
Once the caterpillars are big enough, I used a plastic cup filled with water, covered the lid with alluminum foil, poked very small holes in it and started picking leaves with stems still attached, and put them through the holes in the cup so that the stems are submerged in the water. This lets the leaves last for much longer. When should you use this setup? When the caterpillars aren't so small that they could crawl into the water through the holes you punch for the leaf stems, but even then I wait just a bit longer to be safe.
[IMG]http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9203/testtg.png[/IMG]
As you can see, the caterpillar in that picture is too big to accidentally crawl through that hole in the aluminum foil where he would drown, and since the leaves now have water, they'll last longer. Cutting the tip of the submerged stem or stalk every night so the water can get in better will make it last even longer. However since they're no longer in a sealed container you're gonna need some sort of netted cage to keep them in in case they fall off the leaves and wander off. If you let them run out of food they will wander off, too.
this cage is a decent size [url]http://www.amazon.com/Insect-Lore-Live-Butterfly-Garden/dp/B00000ISC5/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top[/url]
When the leaves don't look good anymore, change them out. You have to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't run out of food, especially since the bigger they get, the faster they eat, the more often they'll need more food. Likewise the more you have the more often you're gonna have to get them food.
Since this isn't an easy task I really wouldn't recommend trying to keep more than 15 or 20 of these, especially if you've never raised caterpillars before. How many of them do you have exactly? You can maybe start with 30 or so when they're small since keeping them alive when they're that small is very difficult, but once they get very big you're not gonna want very many and should maybe consider letting go of any you don't think you can manage.
I had 80 full grown caterpillars once, this is what i had to do to keep them alive
[img]http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/171/c/e/luna_moth_3_by_postal_crazylegs-d3jgkot.jpg[/img]
there's about 20 plastic cups there, all capped with aluminum foil, and all filled with leaves. it was about a 3 hour job gathering those leaves, cleaning the container, and setting them all up, and i had to do it every few days. So yeah, you don't want too many of these guys.
Damn I remember this thread, this is the coolest shit
This is wonderful! I am a children's librarian at a public library in Iowa. A lady found a very large caterpillar and brought it in yesterday, informing me she believed it was a Luna Moth. I had visions of the kids who come in watching this caterpillar go through its stages until becoming an actual moth. I found your site, read through it and made a new realization... what we have is, in fact, an Imperial Moth caterpillar. I did a little research and determined that it needed to bore underground to enter its pupal stage. So I brought my aquarium with the caterpillar home, had my husband dig up some dirt from the yard and filled the aquarium about a third full. Within one hour that caterpillar had bored down under the dirt, and I haven't seen him since. Now I'm wondering what in the world I'm going to do with this thing until next August. I read through your post again. Did your Imperial Moth caterpillar have to bore underground? Since you have a picture of it, I'm curious about whether I could/should dig around in the dirt and see what I find?
Just trying to determine if this project will hold any interest for the kids at this point. For the several hours that I had the caterpillar in the library, the kids were fascinated with it. I'd like to keep that going if I can.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
