# fallen cacoon



## aje88 (Oct 25, 2009)

woo i havent been on in a while. anyway well i was outside looking for some new bugs when i stummbled apon some worms i picked up a few and put them in the habitat. well a few days later the worms were going up the wall and some were even cacoons. im worried because about 3 worms didnt bother climbing up the wall to turn in to cacoons and i was surprised that they were turning in to cacoons on the floor. im concerned will they make it to the butterfly stage or will they die. is this normal please reply.


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## PhilinYuma (Oct 26, 2009)

aje88 said:


> woo i havent been on in a while. anyway well i was outside looking for some new bugs when i stummbled apon some worms i picked up a few and put them in the habitat. well a few days later the worms were going up the wall and some were even cacoons. im worried because about 3 worms didnt bother climbing up the wall to turn in to cacoons and i was surprised that they were turning in to cacoons on the floor. im concerned will they make it to the butterfly stage or will they die. is this normal please reply.


Yeah, missed you around, aje. It sounds as though your worms are (were) moth caterpillars, if they spun cocoons. Cocoons are made of silk and the chrysalis, the stage between caterpillar and moth, is inside. The cocoon keeps the chrysalis warm during the winter. Butterflies usually just produce a chrysalis. In either event, if they successfully turned into a chrysalis, whether covered by a cocoon or not, they should turn into moths/butterflies in the spring, or maybe earlier if kept indoors.

I was extremely interested in the fact that you use "worm" for "caterpillar," by the way, because I didn't know that the words were ever used interchangeably in American English (and so far as I know, they aren't in Spanish). There is a long tradition of doing this in English. The English C20 poet Robert Graves used the words interchangeably in one of his poems, but it may be that he was being "cute" and deliberately using an old term that William Blake (_Songs of Innocence and Experience_) had used at the very end of the eighteenth century, eight years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in America. It is still used to refer to some beetle grubs called wood worms, and come to think of it, the fall armyworm is a moth caterpillar that is very destructive in the U.S. It was also used to refer to a dragon and is cited in _Beowulf_, written at least a thousand years ago. If you don't want to read it in the original Old English, try the 2007 movie, in which Angelina Jolie plays Grendel's mom.  

Edit: Oh! And of course, the inchworm that we talked about in a thread a while back! And don't folks who find moth maggots in apples call them "worm eaten?" And how about catalpa worms (sphinx moth caterpillars), and caddis worms from caddis flies, and, and... Hey, you've nearly got enough for a short article! :lol:


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## gadunka888 (Oct 26, 2009)

are the caterpillars( worms) that are spinning cacoons on the ground the same species as the ones on the wall? if they are not, they might be the larvae of moths that pupate underground. just place them on a moist paper towel.


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