Great peacock moth caterpillar
Hello! I met this chubby fluorescent chap with really bright blue specks on a hillside path near Grenoble, in the French Alps, last August. I am from England and therefore am not used to large, alien-looking insects, so was very excited. I identified it as a great peacock moth caterpillar, the largest European moth. I just wanted to share it with your site’s caterpillar fans. Thank you!
Emilie Pavey, Grenoble
Hi Emilie,
Thanks for sending us your wonderful image of the Great Peacock Moth Caterpillar, Saturnia pyri. We cropped your credit card out of the photo. While we agree it was a good indication of scale, which we generally appreciate, we felt the card distracted from the beauty of the caterpillar. Our readership might want to know that this Great Peacock Moth Caterpillar was longer than a standard Visa card. While researching the web, we discovered an image of this species painted by Vincent van Gogh.
The great peacock moth doesn’t exist in Germany! It also does not exist in northern france, in luxembourg it is extinct.
But in parts of switzerland and austria this moth lives.
Rolf
Hi,
My daughter ( age 6) found a giant peacock moth caterpillar in our garden in south west France. Are they common though out France ?
Oh yes & Amélie would like to know do they change colour before turning into a pupa? Thank you
Many Saturniidae caterpillars change color prior to pupation, but we cannot say for certain that the Giant Peacock Moth Caterpillar is one of those. We do not believe they are as common as they were in the past.
Hi,
My daughter ( age 6) found a giant peacock moth caterpillar in our garden in south west France. Are they common though out France ?
Oh yes & Amélie would like to know do they change colour before turning into a pupa? Thank you
I just found one in our garden for the very first time. We live in Languedoc.
It is so beautiful and our cat wanted to play with it.
I just found one in our garden for the very first time. We live in Languedoc.
It is so beautiful and our cat wanted to play with it.
We’ve seen two on a cherry tree on Elba. While having breakfast they were wandering around the terrace. Lizzards showed up and approached them. To eat them? The lizzards ran of anyway, seemingly impressed of their size. Yesterday in bed I heard some high pitched solitary chirping outside. Was that the
Great info here!