Brigitte’s autumn hideaway

You might remember my post about the Emperor gum moth not long ago (click here if interested)

Yesterday when Christoph was outside working, something fall onto his head and when he looked around he saw it was a huge caterpillar of the Emperor gum moth

He brought her inside…

… and we gave her into the jar were we already keep 2 cocoons of the same family.

She was quite acrobatic by checking out the whole jar…

… and she even looked out of the top!

But then she found a place she liked. We gave her some Eucalyptus into the jar just to be sure she had something to munch.

Then at night she started to make silky threads!
Unfortunately it was so late and we couldn’t watch (it takes her 8 hours to complete her cocoon)

So in the morning she had finished her work and now we have three cocoons

I wonder when they will be transformed since this special caterpillars can stay in their cocoons for months to many years…

To say from the size of the cocoons we have two females and one male which is a bit smaller then the others.