We often use the term “instar” when discussing larvae and caterpillars. Today, we are going to discuss instars in depth,…

We get a lot of inquiries from readers wanting identification of (not-so) creepy crawlies, and we do our best to answer these. To do this we use information such as the geographic location in which the animal was found, what food sources are readily available to the animal, whether it was found indoors or outdoors, and what it looks like. However, much of the time we are offering our very best educated guesses, because so many larva and caterpillars look alike. This is not surprising, as current estimates state that there are between 2 million and 30 million species of insect and approximately 75% of those go through a larval stage. This means that there are between 1.5 million and 22.5 million different caterpillars and larvae out there. So, some of these are bound to look alike. Identification is further complicated by the fact that many larva go through several instars (or phases), and a single animal may look quite different over time.

While a lot of us let our cats or dogs sleep in bed with us, it’s unlikely there is anyone who wants any sort of worm in their bed. Unfortunately, that is exactly the situation that one reader has encountered.