This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a two-stage, bi-colored insect that’s doubly easy to recognize, the Giant Leopard Moth (Hypercompe scribonia).
The Giant Leopard Moth is a fairly large moth in the Tiger Moth tribe, Arctiini. This moth is about two-inches long and mainly monochromatic in pattern. Their wings are pearl-white and spotted with rings and blotches of matte black. Yet, beneath those wings hides an abdomen of pastel-orange and iridescent-sapphire. A hard to miss and elegantly beautiful moth if ever there was one! What’s equally hard to miss is their caterpillar. The larval stage of the Giant Leopard Moth is what is colloquially known as a “wooly-bear” caterpillar. Their caterpillars get this name from being cloaked in a pincushion pelage of stiff hairs, giving them a thick and fuzzy appearance, like a bear’s winter coat. We have several species of Tiger Moth whose caterpillars go by the Woolly-bear nickname but the Giant Leopard Moth larvae’s are particularly recognizable. When fully grown, their larvae are a deep, semigloss-black with burgundy tones below and flashes of ruby-red in the joint between each body segment. In their younger instars, they have a banded two-tone appearance of black and cayenne-red. These caterpillars reach nearly three-inches in length in their final instar!
The Giant Leopard Moth’s caterpillar feeds on a wide variety of plants and the species is a common sight for gardeners throughout the Lowcountry. They’re often found scurrying around in backyards or cozied up in a silken hammock beneath yard debris, palmetto fronds, brick piles, forgotten pots, and wayward lumber. Unlike some of our other fuzzy caterpillars, these Woolly-bears are safe to handle and can’t sting. Their only defense is rolling into a difficult to swallow ball when bothered. Giant Leopard Moths overwinter as caterpillars, pupate in late spring, and the nocturnal adults emerge and fly throughout the summer.
