About Fur
Fur is not a caterpillar!
Some readers are confused by Fur. Is he a talking caterpillar? No, he's a talking colony of caterpillars (Forest Tent Caterpillars, to be exact). In some ways he's like the Borg from Star Trek—a single intelligent being made up of a collective of individual organisms.
Photograph by Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
Fur is a colony of caterpillars.
Fur looks much like this group of forest tent caterpillars resting on an aspen tree trunk.
Photograph by Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
Tent Caterpillar Life Cycle
Moths lay eggs in summer.
Tent Catepillar moths only live a few days. After mating, the females lay from 100 to 300 eggs together in one mass around small twigs. The eggs develop into caterpillars within a month, but the caterpillars do not emerge until the following spring.
Photograph by Scott Tunnock, USDA Forest Service,www.forestryimages.org
Eggs hatch the following spring.
The newborns hatch early in spring and race against time to feed and complete their caterpillar life stage before their enemies can destroy them and their food leaves become too tough to eat.
Photograph by E. Bradford Walker, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, , www.forestryimages.org
Caterpillars moult as they grow.
Tent caterpillars grow in stages by moulting or shedding their skins. Their stages are called instars. The forest tent caterpillar typically has five instars. The light coloured caterpillars in this photo just molted. Their darker brothers and sisters will soon follow.
Photograph by Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, www.forestryimages.org
Caterpillars stick together.
Tent caterpillars remain together for most of their caterpillar lives. During their fifth stage, they finally scatter in search of a few last meals and a safe place to spin their cocoons and pupate.
Photograph by Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
They spin a cocoon before they change to moths.
About eight weeks after hatching from the egg, the caterpillars form silken cocoons. They turn into pupae and moths, which emerge about ten days later—to begin the life cycle again.
Photos by James B. Hanson, USDA Forest Service, www.forestryimages.org
Tent caterpillars can damage wide areas of forest.
Tent caterpillars my look cute on their own, but in large numbers they can strip the leaves from trees over large areas. Forest tent caterpillar populations are roughly cyclical. They 'outbreak' about every ten years. In the story of Southcrop Forest, Fur is born at the end of such an outbreak.
Photograph by R.C. Morris, USDA Forest Service,www.forestryimages.org