“What are these caterpillars collected in Western North Carolina on pagoda dogwood in mid August?” asks this reader of the creatures in the photograph below. The critters, as we can see, are black and yellow in color, with clear segments divided by gray lines and multiple legs on the underside of their bodies.

We received the following email a little while ago: “it’s black with yellowish stripes and hairy. What is it?!” That is the entire message, and no picture was sent with the email. We presume our reader found some sort of creature that he wanted us to identify, and just decided to convey this desire in the most concise manner possible. Based on its description, it sounds like our reader found a caterpillar, so below we explore some caterpillars that are hairy and have black and yellow stripes.