This is a camouflage looper caterpillar . The caterpillar bites off pieces of the flower he is on to decorate his back....He places each petal, stamen, and twig by plucking it, gumming it and then precisely placing it in the perfect spot. Thus, he achieves complete anonymity by blending in perfectly with his dinner host. If you google him, you can see some videos of him doing precisely that!
This was my first photo of this flower. I didn't know what was on top of the flower, but it puzzled me to see a perfect flower with cluttered with petal rubbish. As I magnified the image in my camera, imagine my delight to find a living being under all that "trailer trash"!
His head is coming down the right side of the photo.
I isolated the flower from any distractions, including the stem, so you would be able to clearly find the little fella
I was a day late for the camo weekly challenge, so I thought I'd try my luck for a weekly pic in the macro gallery....
If you want to see this cat from the front "inchworm style", you can see my post in the macro gallery from a couple of weeks ago. I think it's pretty cool...I didn't even know these caterpillars existed, although I'd taken many photos of their tiny emerald winged adults perched on my windowglass at night.
Shot handheld sitting on the ground.
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