Saturday, August 16, 2008

[Unusually] Pretty picture: Danaus plexippus caterpillar

(And by Danaus plexippus, I mean monarch.)


This is either a really close-up view of its head, or a close up view of its ass. It's surprisingly hard to tell, and I actually watched it crawl in both directions while I was trying to get the picture, so I don't even have that to go on. If forced to bet, I'd bet head.

I'm iffy about the butterflies (I like tiger swallowtails, Papilio glaucus, better.), but monarch caterpillars rule.


2 comments:

perL said...

Yup. That's a gorgeous picture, all right, Mr.S. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

That's the head end. Caterpillars have two kinds of feet/legs -- essentially 3 pairs of true legs (usually black, shiny and hard looking) loated at the head end, and lots of pairs of pseudo legs (usually the same color as the body and are soft and stumpy-looking like elephant legs)

Good pic!@