| Pale Brown Hawk Moth - Theretra latreilliiFamily SphingidaeThis page contains information about Pale Brown Hawk Moths that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
The Green form caterpillar is the same body shape, green in colour and less patterns on the body. All of them have the curved horn on its tail and the eyespots on the first abdominal segment. With their eyes pattern on the first segment, they look like a small snake with large eyes. And their 'eyes' blink!! When the caterpillar is feeding, its head extended, the eyes pattern is half folded and it look like the closed eyes. When disturbed, the caterpillar hide its head back into its body and this make the eyes pattern fully open. Just look like a snake being waken up. We found that when the caterpillar are young, which they are too small to mimic a snake, they have another standard posture when disturbed. We can not tell what it look like. Most likely is something that their predators want to avoid, such as a paw. The caterpillars start to turn into a pupa when they grow up to 90-100mm. They find a place on soil where covered with plants litter. They use their silk to hold those plants litter to form a small room and turn into a pupa inside. They take two days to turn from caterpillar into pupa.
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