Tiger moth, Grammia geneura.
The Grammia geneura or "wooly bear" caterpillar sacrifices food quality to imbibe a
witches' brew of toxins from various plants to make itself unpalatable to predators and
resistant to parasitoids. [AmNat PDF]
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in those images. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist has written a blog about science since 4 August 2004 (the early years are archived 





















Comments
We have a tiger moth caterpillar in a cage and want to know what leaves it eats.
Posted by: ann | August 31, 2008 10:48 AM