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Monkey Slug

uncommon

Monkey Slug

Phobetron pithecium

Habitat: Eastern North American deciduous forests and orchards
Body length: 25 mm
Order: Lepidoptera · Limacodidae

Weird but real

Its nine pairs of furry, fleshy lobes can detach, helping this caterpillar masquerade as a scrap of hairy debris.

Why it's cool

It looks like a lost toupee learned to crawl: a surreal slug-moth larva hiding beneath a coat of detachable arms.

Photographs

Phobetron pithecium (Smith, 1797), to actinic light and LepiLED, Natural Area Teaching Laboratory, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA, 1 October 2018 — Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark · CC BY 2.0 · source

The North American moth Phobetron pithecium (J.E.Smith, 1797) (Lepidoptera: Limacodidae). Photograph taken in Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA (July 16, 2020). — jimeckert49 · CC BY 4.0 · source