#carolina sphinx

[onenicebugperday]

do you have anything neat to share about tobacco hornworms? I got kinda mad at the ones that ate a bunch of my tomato plants' foliage.

They can certainly be destructive! But that's because caterpillars are designed to be eating machines. Gotta get very fat and happy before pupating into adults.

Tobacco hornworms have a special place in my heart since I raised several generations from egg to moth.

Tobacco hornworms are the larval stage of the Carolina sphinx moth, which is relatively large and very pretty!

Lorge. Photos by cassie169, nanofishology, and muir

They remind me a lot of death's head moths, which are some of my favorite species, and which tragically are not available to raise in the US.

In typical sphinx fashion, they feed from flowers and look like hummingbirds when flying, though this species is nocturnal so you likely won't see them flying around in the daytime.

Photo by kim_fleming

In the wild the caterpillars are green because of the yellow plant pigments they eat, but when you raise them in captivity on an artificial diet, they are bright blue, which is EXCELLENT.

Photos by sambiology and via bigappleherp

The caterpillars can make cute clicking noises to scare away predators. Adults can squeak! Or squirt you with a defensive fluid.

Idk if anyone else will think this is cute but their poop looks like little grenades:

Photo via southeasternoutdoors

Once the caterpillars are fat and happy enough, they burrow into the ground to pupate.

They may be destructive in gardens, but captive raised caterpillars are used in biomedical science labs for a whole bunch of different things (including neurobiology!) and of course they are hugely popular in the reptile pet trade as feeders.

Also.......they are precious and I love them :')

[jenfoundabug]

Chonk with banana for scale

(Manduca sexta larvae almost ready to pupate)

[funnycircle]

sphinx of

[oldnorthcarolina]

Sphinx — Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina

[dailymothuntilmothreturns]

Daily moth 42 Carolina sphinx moth

image source (1) (2)

[bone-free-as-the-wind]

This large cryptic friend showed up today, a Carolina Sphinx moth.

(photos by S Suzuki-Martinez)

[bugkeeping]

Carolina sphinx Manduca sexta

[crevicedwelling]

Hello bug person! I accidentally forgot about a horn worm for my lizard and when I opened the container he'd cocooned. I tied it up with the little loop and some thread and it's very much still alive and wiggly. Will it make it? What comes from a hornworm? Thank you!!

don’t hang up a hornworm pupa. that “loop” is the moth’s tongue and if it breaks that will kill the moth. open air is also probably too dry for it. they naturally burrow when prepupal and should develop in an underground chamber; you can mimic this by putting some moist soil in a container and leaving the pupa in shallow depression in the substrate.

the species bred in captivity for reptile food is Manduca sexta, the tobacco hornworm or Carolina sphinx.

I would probably feed the pupa to your lizard, though. caring for these moths is quite difficult since they need to drink from flowers or artificial feeders and in any case they bang themselves up pretty badly in a cage. the moth will suffer less if you do not let it eclose

[teknikolor-walters]

GUYS THERES A TYPE OF SPHINX MOTH THAT'S CALLED THE CAROLINA SPHINX AND IT LOOKS LIKE THIS

GUYS!!!!

[onenicebugperday]

@izunafox53 submitted: I raise caterpillars in my spare time. I have tobacco hornworms and one sphinx moth caterpillar. The hornworms are named Beans, Rice, and Toast and the sphinx is Sausage. They'll be moths soon! :)

I love them all! Sausage is a very appropriate name. Look at how delightfully fat they are :)

Btw - "sphinx moth" is just the common name for any species in the family Sphingidae. Sausage looks like a pandorus sphinx as far as I can tell from what little I can see of their markings and their silly hood. Pandorus sphinxes also don't have a horn on their butt like most sphinxes do!

[jenfoundabug]

I found a tobacco hornworm on my tomatoes this week. Lucky for it, I have a junky tomato volunteer plant that’s not producing. So I relocated it, and now I have a new pet lol.

This species gets super chonky so unless something eats it, I’ll have more pictures in the coming weeks. The adults are also quite large and beautiful, and they’re native pollinators, yay.

Manduca sexta, aka Carolina sphinx moth

[funnycircle]

closer than ever

[sexilene]

chanel!

my girl! mi hermana! la amo con todo mi corazón!! i'm biased because we are both latinas but she is my fave cheetah girl! this fashionista has a flair for designer clothes and once charged hundreds of dollars on her mother's credit card! she's sassy, witty, smart and fashionable and i definitely think her perfumes would reflect that! 💋

🛍 Dolce&Gabbana By (lol only because of the cheetah print packaging!)

🛍 Carolina Herrera Good Girl Blush (such a classic!)

🛍 Aphrodisiac Elixir

🛍 O Boticário Águas de Ameixa

🛍 Sweet Diva (also iconic and give major older sister in the 2000s)

🛍 Fantasy Twist

🛍 Jennifer Lopez Live Platinum

🛍 Arno Sorel Bonsoir de Paris

🛍 Police Police Potion Love For Her (sweet yet strong amber sent!)

🛍 Cathy Guetta Ibiza Femme

🛍 Sphinx Fragrances Horchata de Vanille (vanilla and cinnamon heaven!)

🛍 Kayali Fragrances Sweet Diamond Pink Pepper 25

🛍 Carolina Herrera 212 Sexy

🛍 Vivienne Westwood Boudoir

🛍 Yves Saint Laurent Elle

🛍 Summer Rock! Sweet Candy

[mothask]

Hiiiii 😊 My roomie and I just found some super fluffy moths on a building near our apt

I'm about to look em up to see what they are, but I thought you would enjoy them

EHHSHSHEUE I LOVE THEM ✨️😖😖❤️💖🥺

The little fella on the right almost looks like a flannel moth ✨️🥺 and the other guy on the left seems like a common moth they are both extremely valid and wonderful.

Speaking of my own encounters tonight I had night class and where I parked it was near those big light generators so you know what that means 😖✨️

COOL AHH MOTHS

LOTS OF WHITE LINED SPHINX MOTHS and some cool hawk moths including a Carolina sphinx, a bunch of humming moths I even saw some tiny praying mantis all around they were very tiny 🥺💖✨️😖

The coolest moth by far has to be the Carolina Sphinx, that spotted one that looks like a piece of tree bark 😭 they were huge compared to the smaller humming moths. Wonderful stunning 🥺✨️

[enby-newt]

A malachite (Siproeta stelenes) and a Carolina sphinx moth (Manduca sexta)

[agentthirsty]

Top 5 real life places you’d like to see turned into Pokémon regions

Oh boy here we go. Thank you!

In no particular order:

I live in the southeastern USA and I'd love to see a region like that. Span all the way from the Atlantic to Louisiana. Maybe even Texas? Woods, farmland, swamps, plains. An area similar to the Bayou and have a city rich in culture like New Orleans. The region can be split by a river kinda like the Mississippi and have some mountains like the Appalachian. Gotta be a possum Pokemon, new deer Pokemon, fucking mosquito Pokemon. The Lizard Man would be a Mythical Pokemon (and no not the Lizardman tattooed performer fella, I'm talking THE LIZARD MAN of South Carolina infamy.) Florida is in the DLC

An Aussie region. Include Tasmania and New Zealand as well maybe? Deserts and beaches and mountains and rainforests. GOTTA have a building that is as recognizable as the Sydney Opera House. GOTTA have a Great Barrier Reef. I'd wanna see a kangaroo Pokemon, a kiwi Pokemon, A THYLACINE Pokemon. Echidna and platypus ones too. Komala has a regional evolution.

An Indian region would be so pretty. You'd have deserts and tropics and plains and then a mountain range like the Himalayas. Farms and fishing rivers. Gorgeous architecture and a building like the Taj Mahal. The region where Cufant and Copperajah are from! Also gotta have a new tiger Pokemon and maybe a river dolphin or a rhino.

Would loooooove an Egypt region. So much desert and countless sand dunes but of course something like the Nile river and valley with oases full of date palms and all that. So pretty. Temples and pyramids and obelisks; just so much ancient architecture but of course integrate the modern, bustling society as well. Gotta have the Suez Canal and the peninsula. The legendaries would be inspired by Egyptian mythology obviously. Like a Sphinx Pokemon! The desert in Unova is pretty much the vibe, just more large scale and more Egyptian.

My final dream region is Mexico! Hot arid areas, tropical rainforests, beaches, and mountains like the Sierra Madre. The gulf! Incorporate the Chicxulub Crater into the lore of the region. Can be the same type of extinction event as the real world and that's what took out the Tyrantrum and Bastiodon and all them. Gotta have them ancient Mesoamerican temples and pyramids. Pokemon like coatls and jaguar and spider monkey Pokemon. A CHIHUAHUA POKEMON. A chupacabra Pokemon would be wild. Hawlucha would have multiple aesthetic variants.

Honorable mentions: Brazil, Greece/Italy/Mediterranean