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Project Noah Nature School
It has and orange color with a very slimy body and it's "helmet" is greenish and round. Our teacher said this might be parasitized by some nematodes or what..
Forest ecosystem where the canopy is dominated by Psychotria and other trees. Higher elevation and during the time of sampling, high temperature.
We saw this while we were doing our sampling in the mountain and we named this as "Caterpillar with a Helmet" which literally looks like one.
Spotted on Apr 23, 2012
Submitted on Apr 23, 2012
4 Comments
No, this is definitely a caterpillar. I thought it was a mollusk at first too, but in the side view you can make out its feet, and the lower portion of the swollen head shows a sclerotized region that is part of the caterpillar's head capsule.
Maybe it's a semi-slug. These are snails whose shells are reduced in size but are still visible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-slug). If so, it is a mollusk and should be moved from "Arthropods" to "Other." What a cool and unusual spotting!
Weird! It looks like a snail without a shell, or a slug with a strange helmet thing.
How bizarre!