Tomato Hornworm Moth?

Remember that mystery creature we posted last week. Well, look what it looks like now!  Yes, the pupa/cacoon hatched sometime over the weekend.  When first looking at it in the container, I thought it was dead. It wasn’t moving and the wings didn’t look fully formed. I was sad, but thought I would still keep it to show the students.  Also, to ask the founding student what he wanted to do with it.

When the second graders came to class yesterday I asked the student to show his classmates the hatched moth that had unfortunately died.  Being in a container it was hard to see it, so I decided to take it out.  Couldn’t hurt  since it was dead.  When I went to grab it, the moth jumped and wiggled. YIKES! It scared me!

We all gleed with excitement that it was still alive. I still took it out and put it in the bowl for a better look. It was moving around here and there when the bowl moved around too much, but mostly the moth was just still.

PROBLEM: Now what do we do with it?  As you can the wings don’t look fully formed. It’s not spread out as to fly and the moth hasn’t attempted to fly.  So what do you think would be the best for the moth?  It needs to eat and drink, but we’re not sure what it eats or drinks.  We don’t want to just leave it somewhere since it can’t fly because predators might get it.  Tell us what you think we should do.

Above are some pictures of the moth. We’re not completely sure what type of moth it is. So if any of you know, please leave us a comment.  The second graders will be keeping an eye on this guy and doing some informal research.

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