Banded Woolly Bear

If you live in North America, chances are good that you’ve come across the banded woolly bear caterpillar, a fuzzy caterpillar black on either end and red in the middle. However, you might not have associated it with its adult moth form, an unimpressive small yellow-orange moth with a fuzzy body, which is known by a different common name, the Isabella tiger moth. Pyrrharctia isabella has a widespread distribution, mainly in open parkland and prairie habitats across North America, and this species has much folk lore surrounding it. For example, the size of the caterpillar’s red band is said to predict the severity of the upcoming winter (in actuality, the the age and instar of the caterpillar determines the band size).