Today's mystery caterpillar was found by volunteers Jill and Naomi and is a member of the Schizura genus of moths, likely a Black Blotched Schizura (Schizura leptinoides). Schizura is a genus of the family Notodontidae which contains about 3,500 moth species around the world with most being located in the tropics of the New World.
Several species of Schizura larvae can shoot a stream of distasteful chemicals out a gland in their horn at an attacker if they are threatened. Schizuras grow up to be fairly plain brown and grey moths.
One neat fact about these caterpillars is that they chew out a notch in a leaf of their host plant and then hang out on the edge of that notch and look for all the world like a leaf going brown around the edge. Check out that camouflage when I put him back on a tree outside.
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