Thursday, June 24, 2010

a very small neighbor

I found this geometer moth larva (a.k.a. inchworm, family Geometridae) on a piece of monofilament line in our garden.


Apparently, what makes an inchworm move the way it does is that it has only two or three pairs of legs at each end and none in the middle. Here are the top two pairs grasping the fishing line.

The second pair again, another view:

The bottom three pairs.
Who knew? Tiny beauty abounds.

2 comments:

Kari Weaver said...

What detail!

Robin Dreyer said...

I love the latin name. Beautiful pictures.