In Bluffton, this little guy has big ‘eyes’ that don’t see

What has what looks like eyes but doesn’t use them to see with?

No, it’s not a potato, but I did discover the answer to this riddle when I came across a peculiar looking caterpillar in my flower bed: the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar.

Now I’ve seen caterpillars of all varieties in my lifetime, but this cartoon-looking-character was a new one for me. I immediately grabbed my camera to snap a few shots as it inched along the wooden border of my flower bed with its suction cup mouth, thinking all the time that he was looking straight at me with those humongous eyes. But after researching the fat little-bugger, I learned they weren’t really eyes but decoys.

The eggs that produce these odd looking creatures are laid singly, by the beautiful black spicebush swallowtail butterfly, usually on the underside of leaves. When hatched into pupa, the caterpillars make nests of the leaves by spinning silk and curling the leaf up. (Mother-nature has many ingenious creatures.)

The chrysalis stage of this caterpillar looks like dead or dying leaves, which protects them from predators. They color is either green with brown edges or brown. They mostly hide in their nest in the daytime and come out at night to eat.

They start out very small and are a brownish/greenish/bronze-like color. From the beginning, they have those fake eye spots along with other markings. When reaching adulthood, they are bright green with numerous blue spots and thin, black outlines. Their eye-spots’ are much bigger and are kind of shiny.

They also have two other fake eye spots that are yellow. Both are actually skin patterns with dots or stripes.

So, do they even have real eyes they to see with? Actually they do. On each side of their head, they have six eyes that don’t see colors, but only light and dark. The bottom half of their bodies are a sort of pinkish color and, when viewed from certain angles, they look like a small snake, a look that helps scare off predators. (If I were a predator, I’d be scared with just one glance.)

Before they pupate — and turn into the ‘eye-catching’ black spicebush swallowtail butterfly — they turn a bright yellow color. They find a place to pupate by attaching themselves to a stick or small twig of the host bush with silk. They’re ready to molt. The two most commonly used host plants are spicebush and sassafras.

The sassafras tree is pretty common in our area and grows wild in wooded areas. There’s even one growing along the big Formosa azaleas along the fence-line surrounding the front yard of the home I grew up in. The sassafras tree is very colorful in the fall with leaves of red and orange and has a fragrant bark and a root that can be used to brew a cup of hot sassafras tea.

The spicebush is a deciduous shrub growing 6 to 12 feet tall. Many animals such as deer and opossums feed on the leaves and stems, both of which are very aromatic when crushed and have a spicy, citrusy smell. In the fall their leaves turn a very bright and showy yellow color. Come spring, it has yellow flowers in showy clusters with a very sweet odor. Its fruit of red berries are eaten by a variety of birds.

Although these two plants mainly play host for the spicebush swallowtail butterfly to deposit her eggs, the insects seem to enjoy collecting nectar from the large Formosa azaleas in our yard and give our tall bottle brush tree, with its pretty red blooms, a fit because there are plenty of these beautiful butterflies flitting around. That means there are many more spicebush swallowtail caterpillars around that I just haven’t spotted.

Allyn Perdue at Stoney Creek says, “Following the introduction to the life-cycles of insects in the fifth grade in Mobile, Ala., I became enamored with butterflies and giant moths. One of the common species in semi-rural Mobile was the spicebush swallowtail, a gorgeous black, yellow and iridescent blue or green-winged butterfly named for the family of plants that hosted the hungry caterpillars. Bluffton is also fortunate to have this species of butterfly most often seen in late summer. But sadly, development is not the friend of the host plants. Sassafras and spicebush are often mowed down near human residences.”

Keep a sharp eye out (no pun intended), and see how many of these characters you can spot inching around and about your flower garden.

This story was originally published September 5, 2017 at 6:36 AM with the headline "In Bluffton, this little guy has big ‘eyes’ that don’t see."