10 Types Of Caterpillars In Arizona

This post provides some of the caterpillars that have been recorded In Arizona. And you will learn about their identifications and the poisonous ones.

Some caterpillars have bright colors or patterns that scream, “Don’t eat me, I might be poisonous” It’s like they wear a warning sign for predators.

Others are great actors who pretend to be scary things or even parts of a plant. While some caterpillars are camouflage experts.

They look just like the leaves or branches they hang out on which makes them tough to identify. For example, there’s one type of caterpillar that changes color with the seasons.

When it’s munching on oak catkins in the spring, it’s green, and in the summer, it turns dark like an oak twig. And some caterpillars have spiky hairs or bumps that look exactly like plant parts, like thorns.

They can even pretend to be bird droppings. Then there’s a group of caterpillars that cover themselves with pieces of plants. With that said, here are 10 caterpillars that have been identified In Arizona:

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1. Blinded Sphinx Caterpillar
2. Cabbage Looper
3. Mesquite Stinger moth
4. Monarch Caterpillar
5. Painted Lady Caterpillar
6. Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar
7. Puss Caterpillar
8. Two-Tailed Swallowtail Caterpillar
9. White-lined Sphinx Moth Caterpillar
10. Woolly Bear Caterpillar

Let’s learn about their identification.

1. Blinded Sphinx Caterpillar

The Blinded Sphinx is a moth with a fancy scientific name, Paonias excaecata.

This moth is part of the Sphingidae family and lives in places like Arizona, Nova Scotia, and even across Canada to British Columbia.

In the United States, you can spot them as far south as Florida and as west as eastern California, down to central Texas. These moths have a wingspan of about 2.5 to 3.3 inches (that’s 60 to 85 mm).

They’re creatures of the night, meaning they come out when it’s dark. They start getting active in the evening and prefer to hang out in the late-night hours.

When it’s time for baby-blinded Sphinx moths (called hornworms) to hatch, their eggs are tiny and greenish-yellow. It takes about 8 days for them to come into the world.

As they grow up, they nibble on deciduous trees like willows, birch, and cherries, and they also like shrubs such as Ninebark and roses.

Just like their family members, Blinded Sphinx moths bury themselves slightly in the ground to transform into adults. Once they emerge as grown-up moths, they’re in a hurry to find a partner.

Interestingly, these adult moths don’t eat, they’re all about finding love.

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2. Cabbage Looper

The Cabbage Looper is a kind of medium-sized moth that belongs to the owlet moth family. It gets its name from its favorite foods and its funny way of moving.

You’ll often find it chomping away on veggies like cabbage, bok choy, and broccoli, so cabbage is in its name. When this little critter crawls, it arches its back into a loop which makes a tiny bridge.

That’s why they call it a looper. However, while it loves cruciferous veggies the most, it can eat over 160 different plants. This moth doesn’t like to stay put in one place; it’s a traveler.

You can spot it in North America and Eurasia, from as far south as Florida to as far north as British Columbia. The Cabbage looper baby, the larva, can sometimes bug vegetable gardens, especially the cruciferous ones.

It’s not destructive, but it’s getting harder to keep in check because it’s everywhere and doesn’t mind some bug sprays. Scientists are looking into different ways to manage these little guys better.

3. Mesquite Stinger Moth

The Mesquite Stinger Moth, scientifically known as Norape tener.

This critter belongs to the Megalopygidae family, and you can spot the Mesquite Stinger Moth in Mexico and the southwestern United States, specifically in places like southeastern Arizona and southern New Mexico.

When it comes to size, these moths have a wingspan of about 1.1 inches (or 29 mm). Grown-up Mesquite Stinger Moths are white with a dark area on their chest.

Their front wings have a wide edge that’s brownish-black, and the edges of the wings are the same color. They also have a little branch on the inner border that reaches up towards the center of the wing.

However, the baby Mesquite Stinger Moths, or larvae, like to feed on desert plants like mesquite, acacia, and paloverde. They’re light green with black and white stripes and tiny stinging hairs.

4. Monarch Caterpillar

The Monarch butterfly is sometimes just called “monarch” for short. It’s a special kind of butterfly that loves milkweed plants.

You might hear people in different places call it milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, or black-veined brown. Monarch butterfly wings are easy to recognize because they have a cool pattern of black, orange, and white.

And if you ever spot one, you’ll notice it’s about 3.5 to 4 inches wide when it spreads its wings. However, the viceroy butterfly looks a lot like the monarch, with the same colors and pattern, but it’s smaller and has extra black stripes on its back wings.

One of the monarch’s most impressive feats is its long-distance journey. The monarchs in the eastern part of North America have this amazing habit of flying south in the late summer and fall, all the way to places like Florida and Mexico.

In the spring, they make the trip back north, and this journey spans several generations of butterflies. The monarchs on the western side of North America liked to hang out in southern California during their migration.

Some even make it to overwintering spots in Mexico. In 2009, scientists raised monarchs on the International Space Station, and these creatures grew into full butterflies right there in space.

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5. Painted Lady Caterpillar

The bristly-painted lady caterpillar, or Vanessa virginiensis, is a caterpillar that you can find in Arizona and all over North America when the weather’s warm.

These guys like to eat at night or on cloudy days when it’s not too hot and sunny. But during the daytime, they build a comfy hideout at the tip of the plant they’re munching on.

When this caterpillar grows to be about an inch and a half long, it makes a fancy cocoon. And from that cocoon, a beautiful orange-and-black butterfly emerges.

You can see these butterflies all year round in Arizona. As winter rolls in and things get cold up north, more of these butterflies head south to Arizona for a warmer winter.

6. Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar

The pipevine swallowtail, also known as the blue swallowtail, has been identified in North and Central America. It’s got an elegant black body with lighting blue wings in the back.

These butterflies like to stay in different places, but they’re most commonly spotted in forests. When they’re little caterpillars, they can be black or red, and they nibble on certain plants called Aristolochia.

They take some special stuff from these plants to make themselves taste bad to predators. The grown-up pipevine swallowtails sip nectar from lots of different flowers.

However, some types of Aristolochia plants are toxic to their young caterpillars, mainly the tropical ones. Even though people who love butterflies try to help them out on the West Coast, there aren’t official programs or laws to protect them.

But, in Michigan, which is at the northern edge of where they live, people do consider them a bit special and are concerned about their well-being.

7. Puss Caterpillar

The Megalopyge Opercularis is a moth that goes by many names, like the southern flannel moth when it’s grown up. But when it’s a baby, it’s often called the puss caterpillar, asp, Italian asp, fire caterpillar, woolly slug, opossum bug, puss moth, tree asp, or asp caterpillar.

The young caterpillar is about an inch long and covered in lots of long, hair-like stuff, which makes it kind of look like a tiny Persian cat. That’s why some people call it puss.

It can be different colors, from a fuzzy grayish white to golden brown or dark charcoal gray. Sometimes, it even has a bright orange stripe running down its back.

As it grows, the caterpillar’s hair might get a bit messy, and it loses its unusual tail. However, the hair on this caterpillar has some prickly spines that can hurt if they touch your skin. When it becomes an adult moth, it’s covered in long, furry stuff in colors like dull orange or lemon yellow.

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8. Two-Tailed Swallowtail Caterpillar

The two-tailed swallowtail is a big, beautiful butterfly you can find in Arizona. It’s part of a butterfly family that has yellow wings with black stripes that look like tiger stripes.

These butterflies also have some blue markings on their wings. One interesting thing about the two-tailed swallowtail is that it has little eye-like spots on its wings.

These marks can deceive birds and other animals into attacking the wrong end of the butterfly which gives it a chance to get away.

This butterfly looks a bit like other tiger swallowtails, but it usually has two tails on each of its hindwings. And, it’s the largest swallowtail butterfly in western North America, with a wingspan that can be as long as 6.5 inches.

The females are generally bigger and more colorful than the males, with extra blue on their wings. They also have wider black stripes on the front wings.

You might see males turning out in puddles to get a drink, and they have a yellow segment at the end of their abdomen.

Another thing about this butterfly is that it doesn’t usually mix with other similar butterfly species like the western or eastern tiger swallowtails.

You can find the two-tailed swallowtail from Guatemala to Canada, and it likes to live near water in places like streams, valleys, canyons, and even cities at lower elevations.

These butterflies lay their eggs on plants like chokecherries, bitter cherries, and others, depending on where they are. The official state butterfly of Arizona is the two-tailed swallowtail.

9. White-lined Sphinx Moth Caterpillar

The white-lined sphinx is sometimes called the hummingbird moth because it’s about the size of a small bird, with wings spanning 2 to 3 inches.

As baby caterpillars, they can come in different colors, but when they grow up, they look much the same. You can find these moths in many places across Central and North America, and they have quite an appetite as caterpillars.

They sometimes gather in big groups which can cause trouble for crops and gardens. When they become adults, these moths do two main things: they use their sharp eyes and keen sense of smell to find the right plants to sip nectar from, and they help pollinate various flowers, kind of like bees.

The caterpillars are black with orange spots lined up all over their bodies. They also have a little tail-like spike on their back, however, it’s not a stinger, and they can’t hurt humans.

Sometimes they might be bright green with black, or even yellow. When they turn into grown-up moths, their forewings are dark brown with a tan stripe, and their hindwings are black with a wide pink stripe in the middle.

They also have six white stripes on their bodies and wings. Plus, they’re big and have a hairy body.

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10. Woolly Bear Caterpillar

The Isabella tiger moth starts life as a thirteen-segment caterpillar. These creatures have brown hair in the middle part of their bodies and black hair in the front and back.

When they’re out in the sun, their brown hair can look reddish brown. The grown-up moths are usually a bit dull, with yellowish to orangish bodies, and they have strong, scaly chests, small heads, and bright reddish-orange front legs.

Their wings have a few black spots here and there. Isabella tiger moths are found in cold places, even the Arctic. Their caterpillar, known as the banded woolly bear, hatches in the fall and spends the winter as a caterpillar, literally freezing solid.

First, its heart stops, then its gut freezes, and then the rest of its body. It can survive being frozen because it makes a special antifreeze-like substance in its body. When spring arrives, it thaws out and gets going again.

The caterpillar’s hair doesn’t contain venom, and it won’t usually cause any problems. However, it’s not a good idea to handle them because their spiky hairs can sometimes give people skin issues.