Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

A simple experiment with CaterpillarsLast year I made mention of the abundance of Gum Emperor Moth caterpillars in the collective Eucalyptus trees around New Zealand; Well to be a bit more precise: from Canterbury north! These absolutely fascinatingly pretty larvae are huge, colourful and prickly and strong in their legs, and belong to the Silk moth Family. They feed on Gums, Liquidambar and (South American) Schinus molle trees (all are un-related to each other – how weird!).This year we had heaps of eggs again – big eggs in large strings, laid on the leaves. And we noticed that the tiny black caterpillars literally ate most of the leaf-surfaces around the eggs, but left the eggs alone!I suppose it’s a strategy to not kill your brothers and sisters before they hatch from their eggs… but how do these siblings know that? I think the mother moth secretes some oily substance around each eggs that she lays – you can see the shining discolouration around each egg. Even fully-grown caterpillars will chew around the