Happy New Year! To celebrate it being early in the new year, we’ve gone early in a butterflies’ life cycle with caterpillars!
Which image below shows a Viceroy caterpillar?
Bonus: Comment below the ID of the other species.
This is a great chance to try out the ‘blur spoiler’ feature found under the gear wheel symbol 
on your reply.
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I clicked the wrong answer, I wanted the BLANK(editedby admin) one but clicked the BLANK (edited by admi) one by mistake. There is no way to edit this! Maybe something to work on guys.
For me, I can click the “<Vote” button and it will take me back to the beginning of the quiz where I can change my vote. Let me know if that doesn’t work for you and we’ll look into it!
Red-spotted purple?
Thank-you–It worked perfect!
Correct! The one on the left is the Viceroy!
And Sharon correctly guessed that the second caterpillar was a Red-Spotted Purple.
Both of these caterpillars use a common insect camouflage technique of resembling something unappetizing - in this case, bird poop. The horns and bird poop mimicry are signature characteristics that identify caterpillars of the Limenitis genus.
You can read more about bird poop mimicking caterpillars here.
Viceroy and Red-Spotted Purple/White Admiral can be difficult to identify because the two species occasionally interbreed where their ranges overlap. There has even been one spotted in Montpelier!
Viceroy caterpillar by Bruce Cook (iNaturalist)
Red-spotted Purple caterpillar by jlgoch (iNaturalist)
Ready for your next challenge? Check out the Week 7 quiz here!
