I thought capsaicin was a pest DETERRANT!

[Zath]

I found this Tobacco / Tomato Hornworm on my deck this morning, passed out like a Greco-Roman after a night of hedonistic feasting and orgies. The surprising thing was WHAT he had been eating; Habanero peppers.

O.O

I ain't mad. I have more peppers than I know what to do with. Kinda wish he'd gone for one of the Cayenne plants though, lol.

This sucker (when not scrunched up in defense) is close to 5" long. Officially the largest caterpillar I've ever seen with my own eyes.

(Edit) Better pic:

 

[jafvortex93]

looks like a pokemon

 

[NemJones]

Oooo hes really pretty. Nice find

 

[CephFan]

It's a sausage! I know it's a pest but I'd be tempted to keep it in a box and wait for it to pupate.

The pupa looks like an alien!
Cheers
Steve

 

[Zath]

It's a sausage! I know it's a pest but I'd be tempted to keep it in a box and wait for it to pupate.

The pupa looks like an alien!
Cheers
Steve

Thought about it, but the resulting moth, while impressive in size, is decidedly unimpressive in looks. He'll hopefully be better off in the yard....where I chucked him....from the deck.

(Don't worry, I haven't mowed my yard in ages, his fall got broken by the knee-length grass on the hill, haha.

 

[TongueFlicker]

Is it poisonous by nature? It looks like a year-supply of vitamins for a leopard gecko lol

 

[DragonsEye]

They will feed on just about any member of the nightshade family.

If you did desire to carry it through pupation, put it in a container with a few inches of damp (not wet) soil. Keep putting fresh tomato branches or branches/fruit from your pepper plants daily. One day it will "disappear" as they pupate underground. The moths they turn into are pretty cool. As a group they are sometimes referred to as "hummingbird moths" as they are not only about the size of a hummingbird but feed in the same manner ... hovering in front of the flowers they are feeding from. (Commonly mistaken for hummers from a distance.)

If you should see a plethora of small white football-shaped objects appear on its body, then you won't be getting an adult moth out of it. The white objects would be the cocoons of a parasitic wasp. The wasp injects its eggs into the caterpillar, the larvae hatch and feed on the caterpillar's internal organs, and then finally emerge and spin their cocoons on the caterpillar's exterior. Caterpillar may still be alive at that point, but the internal damage is too great for it to survive to adulthood.

 

[Zath]

The moths they turn into are pretty cool. As a group they are sometimes referred to as "hummingbird moths" as they are not only about the size of a hummingbird but feed in the same manner ... hovering in front of the flowers they are feeding from. (Commonly mistaken for hummers from a distance.)

Awwwww.....darn, lol.

I saw a picture of the moth, but it didn't look like the hummingbird moths I've caught in the past. If I'd known that I may very well have kept him, though I didn't know they burrowed. When I let a Luna Moth pupate in an aquarium it just wrapped itself in grass and drying leaves and glued it shut.

Couple months went by, and I figured conditions in the house had killed it, so I picked it up to throw it in the yard, and heard a scritching sound from inside. Couple days later it emerged.

Then I froze it and framed it in a shadow box. ;P Still have it on my wall, though it's starting to disintegrate after a few years.

 

[fdfederation]

Hedonistic feasting...

 

[ps3isawesome]

It's so cute!! Wish I had insects lke this instead of wasps!

 

[SubRosa]

Well it doesn't deter me from eating stuff................

 

[NemJones]

Hawk moths are awesome. We have plagues of them here, but ive never seen the caterpillars around.

 

[Cruzzfish]

Only thing that won't eat pepper is mammals. Peppers don't care if birds or bugs eat them because they either spread the seeds or simply not destroy them in the eating process, so they don't have any chemicals to deter them.

 

[Dragoness]

some animals simply don't respond to capsaicin. Some animals actually like it.

 

[DragonsEye]

My sis mixes pepper (cayenne, I think) with her birdseed. Keeps the squirrels from eating it but the birds couldn't care less.

​

 

[Adelea]

Birds don't have all that many (if any) taste buds so the burn of the spice wouldn't hurt most, we readily have birds eating chillies off the bushes, unaffected.

lavender is a good deterrent for an array of things, mint also works well for me in regard to certain insects, lavender is also supposed to deter cats, but I don't think the neighbours cat was told.