Pine Processionary Caterpillar

Do not touch, keep clear!

These caterpillars to move over the ground in long head-to-tail processions and sting with urticating hairs anyone who attempts to molest them. It is also one of the most destructive of forest insects, capable of defoliating vast tracts of pines during its episodic population surges.

The insect is active only during the colder times of the year, spending the warm summer months as a pupa buried in the ground. The moths begin to emerge from the soil in August and shortly thereafter mate and seek out pine trees where they place their eggs. Each female produces a single egg mass which it fastens to a needle of a suitable host trees. Egg masses contain up to 300 or so eggs and the caterpillars typically eclose from them four or more weeks after they are laid.

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