WS23 Oko 1
Oko Wanchi
It is pretty hard to see the little creature, but there in the center of the photo is a woolly bear caterpillar. It has an orange band around the center of its body and both ends are black. According to wikipedia, they emerge from their eggs in the fall and survive the winter by allowing most of its body to freeze solid! “First its heart stops beating, then its gut freezes, then its blood, followed by the rest of the body.” In the spring it thaws. The eggs are puny little balls, and the freshly hatched catapillar bodies are translucent and comprised of thirteen segments that look like little beads strung together. Then they eat fulltime until winter, when they freeze up. When they thaw, they get back to eating until they are large enough to spin a cocoon around themself. Inside the cocoon, they transform and hatch into a Isabella tiger moth with orangish-tan wings with black dots. They only live a week or two in this stage during which they mate and the females lay eggs to produce the next generation. Took the picture on Sunday afternoon, March 1, the second day of the 23rd year of Wingsprings.