Tracie "The Bug Lady" invites you on an out of this world walk on...

Hemeroplanes sp The rainforest of the Osa Peninsula is truly a place of magic. Here, disappearing acts, trickery, and the art of illusion are masterfully crafted in the theater of life. Leaves may spring to life and walk before your very eyes. Bark can suddenly burst into flight. Twigs incredibly stride from tree to tree. Our guests on The Night Tour often ask: “What is the most amazing encounter you‘ve ever had on the night tour?“. Our answer is always the same: Without question, none is more spectacular than an encounter with Hemeroplanes, a species of hawk moth caterpillar. Yes, a caterpillar. A caterpillar may not seem so exciting considering that we do, on occasion, encounter Pumas, Ocelots, and even Tapirs on The Night Tour. The amazing transformation undertaken by the Hemeroplanes caterpillar, though, truly defies the imagination. We have been lucky enough to encounter Hemeroplanes only a handful of times. Our first encounter happened on a cool, drizzly night during the month of August. It was toward the end of the night and we were headed towards town to drop off our guests. As we reached the suspension bridge which crosses the Agujitas River, I spotted a large caterpillar feeding on a plant about a meter off the trail. We were immediately stricken by it’s size. Having never before seen this species, we bent down the leaf on which it was feeding to better observe and photograph it. At first glance, this large caterpillar was quite ordinary. As Tracie lowered the caterpillar's branch and I snapped shots off with my camera, we realized that the caterpillar was changing....becoming something entirely different. After posing placidly for a few shots, the caterpillar suddenly released the twig on which it was perched and hung dangling by its rear set of legs. It began to pull the tip of it's head inward, puffing out the front part of it's body. Gradually , previously hidden shades of yellow, white and black lit up the caterpillar‘s new “face“. Then, what appeared to be eyes, nostrils and scales slowly began to materialize. It quickly dawned on us that this caterpillar was transforming into snake right before our eyes! In just a few seconds, Hemeroplanes looked much more like an Eyelash Viper (Bothriechis schelgelii) than it did a caterpillar. Just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any weirder.....it did. The caterpillar began to flail, as if trying to strike out at us! We stood awestruck, watching this performance, a rush of questions whirling through our minds. Was this even possible? Stunned by what we had just seen, we returned home and immediately began our search to identify this incredible caterpillar. We found a great source of information in 100 Caterpillars by Jeffrey C. Miller, Daniel H. Janzen, and Winifred Hallwachs. Based in Guanacaste and Penn State, Dan Janzen and Winifred Hallwachs have been conducting ground breaking research on the moths of Costa Rica, as well as many other topics, for over thirty years. Janzen was instrumental in saving, reforesting and preserving the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to their incredible publication, this caterpillar is quite rare to see. They describe two similar species previously collected in Costa Rica: Hemeroplanes triptolemus occurs in the Dry Forest while Hemeroplanes ornatus occurs in the Rainforest. According to Janzen as caterpillars Hemeroplanes sp. feed on the leaves of apocynaceous vines. Every time we have found them in Drake Bay they have been feeding on Lacmellea panamensis, an evergreen tree in the Apocynaceae family which occurs in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador. As an adult, Hemeroplanes is a fairly large sphinx moth. Although beautiful in its own right, the adult moth leaves no hint of its spectacular previous existence as a "snake caterpillar". References: Miller, J. Janzen, D. Hallwachs, W. 2006 100 Caterpillars The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press