Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Hakea Moth Caterpillar

Oenochroma vinaria

Description:

A thick squishy-looking brown caterpillar with a broad black band on the upper side of its body. The upper side also showed a scattering of minute white dots with larger paired white spots on abdominal segments one, three and eight. The tail end showed a pair of bright slightly raised orange outgrowths. The ventral side was pale.
The caterpillar was about 40 mm long.

Habitat:

Spotted writhing on the ground -under a hakea tree. Probably dropped by a bird.

Notes:

When disturbed the caterpillar is said to bend its head and present two short "horns" that rise out of the large paired pale spots,to deter predator. This strategy, unfortunately, probably did not work this time
These caterpillars feed on species of the Proteaceae family like Hakea, Grevillea.
Family: Geometridae
Subfamily: Oenochrominae
The adult can be seen in this spotting
https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/85...

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

No Comments

Leuba Ridgway
Spotted by
Leuba Ridgway

Victoria, Australia

Spotted on Dec 16, 2019
Submitted on Jan 3, 2020

Related Spottings

Pale Oenochroma Gum Leaf Moth Oenochroma vinaria (♀) Emerald Moth

Nearby Spottings

Crambid Moth Acute Point Moth Furneaux Island Cape-moth Pale-banded Noctuid

Reference

Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team