Raising a Tiger

tiger-larva-2nd-instarThis first picture is a 2nd larvae I just found this morning.
tiger-larva

For the first time, I’ve had a chance to raise an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. This caterpillar was found on my Hop Tree after I saw a Tiger laying eggs there. It’s getting larger in my enclosed cage and is doing well on Hop Tree leaves. It’s interesting that it is motionless during the day and must thus feed at night. In the early instars it looks like a Giant ST, but changes to all green later.

Having eyebrows is a fun touch on its false eyes.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Below is a comparison of the Tiger and Giant Swallowtail larvae together.

tiger-giant-st-web

2 Comments

Filed under Caterpillars, Host Plant

2 responses to “Raising a Tiger

  1. Tim Bujnoch

    Tom:

       What part of the country do you live in to have seen an E. Tiger Swallowtail?

    Tim.

  2. I’m in St. Louis MO – we get quite a few.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s