Close, but no cigar! ;-) Your caterpillar is Manduca sexta, the Tobacco Hornworm...a very common pest of peppers and other members of the Solanaceae family. I'm pretty sure, at least, that the little horn on your caterpillar is reddish in color, right? If not, then it is the Manduca quinquemaculata, Tomato Hornworm.

Most of us remove these voracious caterpillars as soon as we see them. One that has grown to that size has already eaten more than its fair share.

By the way, you did a very good job at trying to ID your pest. It's quite a bit like the Manduca, isn't it? The one thing to remember when identifying pests is the host plant. Many insects, for example, are fairly host specific...meaning that if we know the name of the plant it may help narrow down the critters that feed on it. Caterpillars are often extremely specific as to what they will eat. The adult moth or butterfly finds the appropriate host plants on which to lay her eggs.

Your Ceratomia has an entirely different range of food plants.

Thanks! I actually was reading more yesterday afternoon and did find that it is a Tobacco horn worm after enough research. When going out this morning to inspect our peppers we found 3 more. 1 was larger than the guy from yesterday and we found 2 very small ones. Could this be the cause of the death of my Cubanelle & Bell peppers I lost last week?

If the death of your peppers was due to disappearing into the mouth of the caterpillars....yes. They eat the plant bit by bit. Most people would find the culprits long before their plants disappeared. Is that how your peppers died?

Hornworms are famously good at hiding themselves amongst the leaves and stems of their host plants. You'd think that, as big as they can get, we'd be better at finding them early. Look for leaves that are nearly missing, chewed down to the rib by these guys.

Just an FYI. There are several hornworms that look similar to the posted picture, so I'd keep that in mind, and not automatically label it a Manduca sexta. The best way to know is to raise one as moth (like in a jar with dirt), and then do the ID. But yeah, the damage is the same, and these guys are big troublemakers.

Keep a constant (daily) vigil and monitoring of the plants, and keep up the removal. Beware of returning generations. Good luck!

I'm sure I'll start seeing these critters soon on my tomatoes. I've just gotten through with a wave of soybean or cabbage loopers, and more recently dark grey caterpillars (some type of armyworm or cutworm).

BTW, if you find a hornworm that has been parasitized like in the attached article, leave it be. Usually when I see hornworms they are already covered with eggs.

tj

Here is a link that might be useful: Great hornytoads

Jim, you are absolutely correct in that there are many green hornworms that truly resemble the Tobacco hornworm. BUT, you won't find many of the others on peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, etc. That's the clincher. Plus, there are definite physical variations that make an immediate identification possible from a photograph, as long as it's clear enough.

Hi. I'm in Arizona and have been seeing these horrible things since around May of this year. They completely destroyed my neighbor's huge beautiful Moon Bush in just 2 days while she was away. She had to cut it to the ground it was so bad.
I have found them on my Pepper trees and I just cut off the branch they are on and drop them for the birds to feast on.
Now, every morning we check our flowers and plants for the buggers.
Look for little black balls at the base and around your plants--those are their stool--then search the plants very carefully bcause they can be hard to see. Also, like said before, look for bare branches and we've discovered that they usually come in 2's. It's amazing the damage they can do in such a short amount of time.
Good luck.