Cooling? that was an inadvertent autocorrect. Of course I meant caterpillar.

What are your concerns?

The coloring looks kind of mottled to me. I think my others looked more consistently white and then more consistently yellow at this stage.

It does look a bit on the pale side. When you say mottled I automatically think of OE. Here is a site that shows pics of an OE infected cat.. at the very least you can compare your cat to those.

Here is a link that might be useful: OE infected cats

Did you bring this caterpillar in from outside? The dark spot half way down the caterpillar looks suspicious.

I did bring it in. I think it may have died. It hasn't moved in almost a day.

I can't tell if the cat is sick or not. Sometimes they stop moving for a day or so, and then shed their skin and resume eating. There are several pathogens that can infect monarch cats, some are viruses, some are bacteria, and one, Ophyrocystis elektroscirrha (check spelling on that one) is a single cell eukaryote.

My monarchs (that I'm raising now) are also very pale. I think depending on how hot it is, I've read that they can be lighter or darker. All of mine now have more of the yellow and white stripes than the black. The black stripes are very very narrow. Of course, it's been running 100-112 degrees every day so the theory that they would be lighter in color in order to absorb less heat makes sense to me!

~Laura

As of this morning it was eating again, so not dead. I'll give it another couple of days to see how it looks when it gets bigger. I have all of my caterpillars segregated from one another, so no harm in seeing how it develops.

I have 7 cats in their last few instars. They've been raised in tupperware in my non-airconditioned house, and they are all quite dark. One looks almost completely black with only very narrow yellow stripes. The temps in the house have probably averaged 85-90. They all seem to be doing fine. I've certainly had much paler batches of cats in the past in much cooler temperatures. So, temperature may be part of the color variation, but there is probably more to it as well.

Martha

It's looking more normal...

{{gwi:514172}}