yellow caterpillar with eyes
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Yellow Caterpillar with Black Eyes (or Eyespots)

A couple of days ago a reader sent us an amazing picture of a yellow caterpillar with black eyes. (These “eyes” are in fact eyespots, which serve no optical function, but more on this in a moment.) She had found a couple of the yellow caterpillars on her back porch and was wondering if we might be able to help with the task of identification. Although caterpillars can be extremely difficult to identify because of the sheer number of different species, we are reasonably confident our reader found a Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar, one of the hundreds of species of Swallowtail caterpillars.

red caterpillar with eyes
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Red Caterpillar with Eyes

A few days ago we received a question from a reader who sent us a picture of what appears to be a red caterpillar with eyes. (Just a few days ago, we answered a question about a yellow worm with eyes, and the “worm” in question was in fact a caterpillar, so evidently people are seeing lots of caterpillars with eyes recently.) Along with the picture, the reader asked one question (slightly edited for clarity): “What kind of animal is in the photo?” Presumably, he is wondering what the red caterpillar with eyes is, so we will limit ourselves to the matter of identification.

yellow worm with eyes
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Yellow Worm with Eyes

Via the All About Worms Facebook page, we recently received a question about a “kind of worm” that appears to have two eyes. Overall, the worm is yellow, but on one end of its body it has black spots that look exactly like eyes. The eyes on the yellow worm are quite large, to the point that they look somewhat cartoonish. The reader sent a superb picture of the creature and only asked what kind of worm it is. So, we are tasked with a question of identification: what kind of worms are yellow and have large eyes?

Posted in Caterpillars

Green, Brown Caterpillars with “Eyes”

We received a question from a reader about a very strange-looking creature she found on her driveway. Although we aren’t completely certain, it looks like a caterpillar; in any event, it looks more like a caterpillar than any other creature, and besides that, we’re pretty sure it’s a caterpillar anyway, to be as convoluted about our relative certainty as possible. The caterpillar is brown and green – more precisely, it is a mix of brown and green, which almost makes the caterpillar look like it is covered in moss. The caterpillar also has two large “eyes” (in fact, they are eyespots, which are faux eyes), and near these “eyes” is a yellow line or stripe that appears to wrap around the creature. The reader was quite alarmed by her find, writing to us “WHAT IS THIS?!?!,” and also urgently asking “Can someone HELP”? (Emphasis not added.) The reader also thought she found a caterpillar, but then became uncertain when she examined what she had found up close. What is this brown, green caterpillar she found (if indeed it is caterpillar)?