Tent Caterpillars –

Tent Caterpillars –

Tent caterpillars build tents – no joke, they really do.  They weave a silk web on the branches of trees which works and is shaped like a tent.  Inside the tent there are different chambers with thick and thin walls for regulating temperature.  Each chamber can let in heat according to the thickness of the walls.  The tent keeps the caterpillars from freezing in the spring, and from frying in the summer.

Sometimes there are so many they just look like one big clump and I can’t count them.  They are considered pests because the large groups can eat all the foliage on a tree preventing fruit and killing the tree.  They like small fruit trees best, especially plums.

Eventually in the summer they turn into moths which lay their eggs in the fall in the same place where the tent was.  When it warms up next year in the spring, another generation of caterpillars will build the tent again.