Tetrio sphinx
The tetrio sphinx is a huge grey-brown moth, but its caterpillar is even more eye-catching. The caterpillar is black with bright yellow bands and an orange-red head, and it can grow longer than a grown-up's hand.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillar can be more than 15 centimetres long, with a black horn about 2 centimetres long on its back end.
On the island of Martinique it is called the Rasta caterpillar because of its black, yellow and red colours.
It eats poisonous frangipani leaves, which makes it taste bad to most animals.
One caterpillar can eat three big leaves a day. White frangipani trees are so often covered in them that people call them wormy trees.
One bird, the smooth-billed ani, still eats it by tearing it open and leaving the poisonous gut.
Most asked questions about Tetrio sphinx
?Is the frangipani caterpillar poisonous?
It tastes bad to animals, and its hairs can irritate your skin. Do not touch it.
?What does the frangipani caterpillar turn into?
A big grey-brown moth with a wingspan of about 13 to 14 centimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pseudosphinx tetrio
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1771
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Sphingidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Sphingidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Giant gray sphinx, Frangipani hornworm, Plumeria caterpillar, Rasta caterpillar
Where the facts come from
- Pseudosphinx (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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