American Dagger Moths

Are the caterpillars poisonous? I can't find anything on the rest of the Internet, aside from pics, and one of my dogs found one in our house. We live in the Chicagoland area, so these are all over the place, but none of our previous dogs ever showed an interest. My dog just followed it around, but my brother's dog would have eaten it. Any answers or good websites would really help. Thanks!

Contributed by meara on 30 July, 2006 - 1:57pm

Poisonous caterpillars

There are related species that have irritating/stinging hairs- but even if this one is the same, a dog would probably drop it rather than eat it. Some caterpillars build up toxins from their host plants, but the species these eat aren't really that harmful.

There's always the possibility of some undocumented defensive chemicals, but I doubt it. Of course, I'm no expert, but I did look through quite a few sites on the web without seeing anything about harm coming from this species

… Chuck Entz, 1 August, 2006 - 3:06pm

Don't know

Here is our info page on that species. My guess is a dog eating one caterpillar wouldn't hurt it much. It certainly would hurt the caterpillar, though. :)

… Lynette Elliott, 1 August, 2006 - 9:40am

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