Mango Hawk Moth Larva

Description:

This larva of Amplypterus panopus (Cramer, [1779]) is the one I referred to in my Spotting No: 194536570. I felt that it would be too much to squeeze into one spotting and decided to treat it separately (I hope that this is allowed). When I first saw this larva, I could not identify it other than the tail horn making it look like a Hawk Moth, but I had never seen such a big heavy Hawk Moth larva. So I started by measuring it. Since it was obviously in its pre-pupal stage i.e. turning brown, lethargic and not interested in eating, I placed it in a cage with some other pupating Hawk Moths and observed it frequently as it moulted, entered its early pupal stage (light brown and soft) followed by the final stage (dark brown and leathery).

Habitat:

Spotted on the ground crawling Into a house under the canopy of Mango Trees. It had probably become disorientated when looking for a spot on the ground to pupate. This species pupates in a cell underground, according to https://tpittaway.tripod.com/china/a_pan.... I was unsure of this when I placed it in a cage with other pupating Hawk Moths, but the bottom of the cage was covered in a deep layer of rice husks as a substitute for soil (I have found this to be successful with other Hawk Moth species). As it turned out, it was too far into the prepupal stage when I got it and was unable to dig, but it ended well when the moth emerged 23 days later.

Notes:

If, like me, you are interested in Hawk Moths, you might want to look at my Spotting No: 1945236570 which tells the rest of the story of this beautiful creature.