The Death's Head Hawk Moth Project

 

10th September

15 eggs arrived

Each egg measures 2mm in diameter
13th September - not even one day old

The caterpillars hatch.

This caterpillar is one day old and measures 7mm in length.

The caterpillar even has a tail!!!

The photograph to the left is magnified 11x

They are given privet leaves to eat, (they will also eat potato leaves). We place them in a washed plastic chinese take-away container.

 
16th September - 3 days old.

The caterpillar measures 1.5cm (15mm). Over double its size since hatching.

2 more eggs have hatched and there are 12 eggs left.

If you look closely you can see the caterpillars in the eggs through the transparent egg shell..
   
21st September - 8 days old.

The caterpillar measures 1.9cm (19mm)

The caterpillar has started to grow stripes. You can see them all over his body.

We put the eggs in another container so its easier to tell when they've hatched.

 
  In the photograph above can you see the three pairs of true legs at the front and the 5 pairs of false legs at the back.

 

 

 

 

 
  27th September - 14 days old.

The caterpillar measures 3cm (30mm)
29th September - 16 days old.

The caterpillar measures 4cm (40mm)

 

2nd October - 19 days old.

The caterpillar measures 5.2cm (52mm)

 

 
5th October - 22 days old - caterpillar photographed shedding its skin. It pulled itself out of the old skin and its face fell off as if it had been wearing a mask!

6th October - 23 days old - 8cm (80mm)

7th October 24 days old - 9cm (90mm)

11th October -28 days old- wandering around the bottom of the cage. 'Who let the caterpillar out! It escaped. Found outside ladies toilet. Place in the stick insect cage where it burrowed into the soil.

Today we took all the caterpillars out of the plastic container and placed them all in the net cage. We had permission from the manager of Plas Gogarth to collect privet from their grounds.

 

 

 
Some of the caterpillars had very different colours. Most looked like the one on the lesft but three looked like this one on the right.
We fed the hawk moth on honey and water. We had to pull the moths tongue out with a blunt pin and put the tongue into the honey and water.

Here the moth is having a drink of honey and water.