Today I was walking through the tracks between Mansarovar and Khadeshwar (lat:- 19.01697 long:- 73.07981) just to see the nature’s beauty, different trees, plants and most importantly butterflies …I don’t know what made me butterflies so attractive but I couldn’t stop myself from taking their pics…I was not able to get good pictures of them and so i kept trying to get a good shot of them. After around 90-95 shots I managed to get a good picture of one of them. And at present I want to see what all different kinds of butterflies can I spot . I need everyone’s help to identify them.
Which plant did you find these caterpillars on? It looks more like a moth caterpillar because the spines and horns look similar to Family Lymantriinae. I could be wrong though
Are you sure it’s the Lophocampa caterpillar? Both the images look very different. The Lophocampa caterpillar has a lot more tufts of hair than the one @Sjuday2527 photographed. Google lens may not always be right.
The pictures turned out amazing btw
Okay welllll… How do you distinguish between a moth caterpillar and a butterfly caterpillar ? I seriously am amazed to see just at looking at a picture one is able to identify whether it’s of a moth or a butterfly( humans not Google lens) how to distinguish between both please tell us @drishtantmkawale
Thanks for your compliment and inputs @Akshitha@drishtantmkawale well even I think it is not Lophocampa maculata , I could be wrong although but I’m denying because there are more hairs in the picture you showed as compared to mine …as you can see hairs are much larger in the front which @drishtantmkawale has sent while it’s not that big enough in the pics i sent .
By looking at a caterpillar, I feel that one can distinguish if it is a moth caterpillar or butterfly caterpillar as moth caterpillars are hairy, big in size (as far as I’ve looked on google, majority moth caterpillars were hairy), on the other hand, butterfly caterpillars are not so hairy, not so big in size (layman’s terms) except the caterpillar of the Monarch Butterfly which can grow upto 2 inches long whereas the average size of a butterfly caterpillar is 4-5 cms.
I may be wrong about the Lophocampa caterpillar (I posted what I saw), and now I also feel the same that the photo which I posted has a very hairy caterpillar with small size (just a random picture).
Today again I went to see those caterpillar and after observing a bit more I got see around ~36 caterpillars in total there were literally many of them…after observing more I got to see two similar caterpillars but different in colour and I also saw a cocoon there
Here as you can see I was talking about these 2 caterpillars who are looking almost similar except their colour…do they belong to 2 different species??? Here are some close-ups ,please help me identify them.
Somewhere in the conversation someone said papaya leaves. Those leaves are castor. Castor grows like a weed all over the place and yes this is the very same castor that Castor Oil is extracted from.
Here is a comparison between the leaves of papaya (left) and castor (right) .
Just want to correct you here and say that only 10% of the moth caterpillars are hairy. Thus a hairy caterpillar is a moth caterpillar, but a non hairy caterpillar could be either moth or butterfly.
Averages are of little help, these are just statistical. Size is also as much a function of the amount of food the caterpillar has eaten.
Here are a few tell tale signs that the caterpillar is not a butterfly caterpillar. Evaluate each point and if even 1 is true, then you have something other than a butterfly caterpillar
The caterpillar is large and has a tail (spine at the end segment) : hawkmoths
caterpillar has only 2 pairs of claspers (prolegs) the last 2 segments and moves in a looping fashion: looper caterpillars
Caterpillar has less that 5 pairs of prolegs
Caterpillar has less than 4 pairs of prolegs: Semi looper caterpillars
Caterpillar is very hairy.
These are 100% tell tale signs of moth caterpillars
If the caterpillar is smooth or slightly hairy and has 4 pairs of prolegs and no tail, then we take it home and rear it. because we can’t be sure until we see the imago(adult)
These 5 points are derived from the Introduction of “Butterflies of Peninsular India” by Krushamegh Kunte. - Universities Press (India) Limited.
This would help, had there been links to references. Else, it is ones opinion against another’s! No evidence and cross references to further verify…!
Hi @Arunan, I know and understand very well about the need for providing references and evidence so with due respect to your request I have looked and found a reference that has most if not all of the points I have made. Very few of them are stated as I have stated them, but can be derived from the positives. I have amended the post to mention the reference.
Further it is much more difficult to provide assurances that exceptions cannot exist. Saying that a hairy caterpillar cannot be a butterfly caterpillar is foolhardy. Heaven knows when some researcher will stumble upon some hairy butterfly caterpillar in the deepest corners of a forest in Nagaland or our own western ghats. Hence we will never find a white paper or a published work that states this. But having gone through nearly all the caterpillar stages of pretty much all the families of butterflies across the world and finding nothing hairy, I can state with 99% certainty(absolutely my opinion) that no butterfly caterpillar is hairy.
Now here is a question to you. As a scientist are you allowed to state opinion based on your knowledge (be it extensive knowledge or not, for who is to judge). And when something is based on your knowledge should you state it. And if you state it then how should you frame it so that it becomes obvious that it is opinion based.
These pictures I’m pretty sure that they aren’t of a butterfly but can’t be sure whether it’s a moth or not. Not only individual ,but I also found them mating…
With their name can anyone also tell which one is a male and which one a female ?
Moving forward with the second, these pics below are definitely not that good enough but I wasn’t able to get better than those as the butterflies weren’t stable
All the above pics are shot in HBCSE campus, Mankhurd. Moving to the Panvel side, I got some good pictures of a butterfly who is quite common but I am not familiar with it’s name.
how to distinguish between both please tell us 
in total 
.
because we can’t be sure until we see the imago(adult)
