Thursday 18 April 2013

What manner of creature?

Yesterday, we took one of the ever-present white toyota trucks that whiz around Puerto Ayora up to a potential field site. These trucks act as taxis and I wonder if shipment of toyotas fell off a shipping container in the pacific and washed up on shore in the Galapagos (much like most of the creatures here). Anyhow, scoping out the field site for potential finch sightings, we stumbled across this interesting creature.

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 I will allow the comments to see if you can guess as to what it is. Remember, there are no known venomous snakes in the Galapagos. This creature is about 5 inches long.

3 comments:

  1. I bred some Deilephila elpenor when I was a kid..the caterpillars looked similar.

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  2. Thanks Martin! Yes, it is a caterpillar. Without an insect guidebook with me, I don't know what kind. But a very impressive rattlesnake/pit viper mimic. It even has a 'scale' at the tail that it can vibrate so that it appears a bit like a rattle. I wasn't fooled but a bird might be.

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