What’s the best way to identify a caterpillar?

There are plenty of field guidebooks for identifying caterpillars. Get thee to a library.

Does this help? https://owlcation.com/stem/caterpillar-identification-2
Do let us know exactly who is Wiggle’s family!

On Android devices (don’t know about iOS) you can use ObsIdentifier for insects.
There’s also one for butterflies.

Post a photo of the bug, and someone here will probably identify it for you.

@stanleybmanly We went to the library. Checked out two books (that the librarian found for us.) But mostly hand-drawn pictures of butterflies and not caterpillars.

@canidmajor I was looking at that same site last night! No leads. But saw some super cool ones on that site that I’ve never seen before. Wiggles is a plain little guy. But he’s a champ at eating and pooping.

@rebbel I have officially fallen down an app rabbit hole. There are so many cool identifying apps! There’s even an app for identifying bugs that have met a grisly death on your windshield. I kid you not. It’s called That Gunk On Your Car.

@stanleybmanly What’s the best way to post an image on Fluther?

@Jeruba @ucme and @RedDeerGuy1 Ha! Maybe I should have posted in social.

@raum, what color is he? How long? Fuzzy, clean-shaven, spiky?

You can’t post images on Fluther, only links to images. Upload it somewhere and link us to it.

You can, of course, flag down a mod and ask to have your question moved to another category.

You can put one picture at a time as your avatar.

@Jeruba He’s a reddish brown color. Not sure how long as it’s hard to measure him because he’s in a jar.

Looks clean-shaven from a distance, but actually has fine hairs on him.

@RedDeerGuy1 That’s a great idea! Now just need to get a good picture of him…

Yes, he should probably be identified, so you can determine what he should be fed. Odds are that he should be gorging himself now on whatever leaves/foliage his species prefers. The clock is ticking, the leaves will be turning soon and the dining room will close. If you can get him up to fighting weight, perhaps you can watch him cycle all the way to butterfly/moth.

@stanleybmanly Luckily finding out what he likes to eat is not an issue. The reason we found him in the first place was that I had noticed that something had decimated my poor succulent. Wiggles is a veritable eating and pooping machine.

We clean out his jar with fresh dirt and succulent leaves each day. He’s been gorging himself on them. Literally leaving just the outside rind of the succulent leaves. Kind of like the caterpillar equivalent of ditching the crust on your sandwich.

Just because he’s gobbling up your succulents doesn’t mean that those are the leaves he prefers. Provide him a side varied leaf menu just for the discovery. Perhaps any variety of succulent will do Remember he’s programmed to cram himself as he races the clock. Under good lighting, see if there is a trace of a white line running down his side. Where are you located geographically?

Look what I found. I just happened onto it and thought of your question. Does your guy look like any of these?

(Note, if you do move your Q to Social, the deleted “unhelpful” responses will reappear.)

Hey! That’s my link!

@canidmajor, oh, goodness, you’re right! Sorry. I was looking up something completely different (the meaning and varieties of code-switching) and landed there, and I didn’t realize you’d cited it.

Do you know anything about that site otherwise? It looks interesting, but I don’t know how reliable. Never heard of it before.

No, sorry, I don’t, but I just thought it was cute that we found the same link. :-)