Smeared dagger
The smeared dagger is a grey night moth with dark marks that look like someone smudged them with a finger. Its caterpillar is even easier to spot. It is covered in tufts of bristly hairs and has bright yellow V-shaped marks on its sides.
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Fun facts
The caterpillar grows up to about 4 centimetres long.
It spends the winter as a pupa, waiting to become a moth in spring.
The caterpillar may turn into a pupa inside a folded leaf of its food plant.
Its back wings are white with a row of small dark dots along the edge.
In the south it has two broods a year, so moths fly in spring and again in late summer.
Most asked questions about Smeared dagger
?Is the smeared dagger caterpillar poisonous?
It is not deadly, but its hairs can irritate your skin. It is best not to touch it.
?What does the smeared dagger caterpillar eat?
Leaves of willow, alder, strawberry, cattail, fireweed and smartweed.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Acronicta oblinita
- Named by
- Smith, 1797
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Noctuidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Noctuidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Smeared dagger moth, Arioch dagger, Smartweed caterpillar
Where the facts come from
- Acronicta oblinita (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 Mike Boone. CC BY-SA 2.5, 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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