What's that?

in insects •  7 years ago 

There is what looks like plant debris stuck to one of my outside walls and if you didn't know better, you'd never suspect that something lives inside.

bagworm.jpg

This close-up has been flipped horizontally to save scrolling, but looking carefully, it is an ingenious construction with an entrance at one end.

bagworm macro.jpg

Looking up the entrance hole, you can see that there is something lurking inside:

bagworm entrance.jpg

This is a bagworm that constructs a little casing and moves around by protruding the top half of its body from the casing and using its legs to move, dragging the casing along. It spends its whole life inside the casing and ultimately pupates and turns into a moth. I don't know which kind this is and I don't want to break apart its little home to find out. I think that since it is far from any food, it must have anchored itself to the wall in order to complete its metamorphosis.

Most bagworms eat leaves although some kinds live inside houses and eat spider webs

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That's awesome. In the first picture, I thought it was an insect, but in the 2nd, it looks like a small piece of wood.

Nature never ceases to pleasantly surprise us.
This way of protecting yourself allows you to survive.
Very interesting to highlight the life of lesser-known insects.
Regards, @nikv.

Insects are fascinating

Cool!
I never knew they ate spiders webs :-)

Amazing what some insects live on. I suppose webs are fairly high protein

Very interesting insect. Never seen such. I just thought it was garbage. It's funny to watch.

I see those little stick bags hanging in the most unusual places. Like the wall of your house. I have never seen anything emerge from them , but I think it would take a time lapsed camera set fro about a year to see the moth. Very enlightening. 🐓🐓

When they are active, they are usually in trees but against walls, you probably won't see much with a camera because they will emerge at night

It is very very small, you have a very good view like me, the other day I was seeing a little ant that got my plate of food

You are very lucky if you only had one ant in your plate. Here, the ants are a terrible nuisance

We have heaps of these in our yard. They have a sticky substance on them, and thats what makes all the leaf litter stick to them, and helps make them camouflage. I'm still not sure what the moth looks like though.

Have you ever seen these moths around? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagworm_moth

Yes, we have a lot of them around. Thankyou, you have solved the mystery.

how awesome he had no idea that this thing was made by a worm