Biggest Hormworm... Ever!

[tadeusz]

Hello, has anyone ever seen a Hornworm this big?? My fiance found this outside when she was walking our dog. Mind you, we live in Phoenix in the Desert! This thing fully stretched was easily over 6." In the pic you can see its over 4.5." I told my fiance to grab it and maybe we could feed it to one of our chams, but she told me it was too big and man she wasn't kidding!!

 

[carol5208]

wow never saw one that big or with that pinkish color and a horn that looked like that! I would neer attempt to feed that to my chameleon!!! I am beginning to wonder if it is a horn at all??? They eat tomato plants from what I understand. Where did you find it?

 

[clarkrw3]

WOW that is impressive!! I haven't seen those in Phoenix before. Just an FYI you don't want to feed wild hornworms to your chams because they live almost exclusively on Tomato plants and those render them toxic to Chameleons.

 

[tadeusz]

That's the thing... I live right next to the desert on all sides and no tomato plants insight! I don't intend to feed it but yeah, I've never seen one with the red on the top either and horn does look funky! Any ideas?

 

[tadeusz]

wow never saw one that big or with that pinkish color and a horn that looked like that! I would neer attempt to feed that to my chameleon!!! I am beginning to wonder if it is a horn at all??? They eat tomato plants from what I understand. Where did you find it?

My fiance found this about 100 feet from our house while walking our dogs, literally in the desert. The next closest house is about a block from us.

 

[clarkrw3]

Looks to me like a The Rustic sphinx (Manduca rustica )

The purple stripes on the side are characteristic.
Feeds of a vareity of trees and shurbs.
Larvae in the genus Manduca have a rough horn

It's at least in the Manduca genus due to that rough horn

 

[carol5208]

omg they are so ugly but beautiful at the same time!

 

[tadeusz]

That makes a little more sense, those feed on some little shrubs that would be around my area. I've never seen them before... Very cool though.

 

[ttaylor]

I saw one (or something similar) to that once some years back. I live in western Maryland. The thing was huge! It seemed aggressive as well. It was so freakishly huge that I didn't know what to think! All I could imagine was "what kinda mess would that make if it got stomped?! Yuck!"

 

[Ace]

lol i was gonna say maybe it got some radiation on it and got that erry purplish glow color and is growing to a giant bug , haha

 

[pssh]

There are a lot of moth species in the US that get well over 5.5 inches as larvae

 

[tadeusz]

My fiance found another one today, same size and just about the same spot!! Crazy, but I have them both inside a little cage I have, what do you think the chances are of a female/male and breeding??? Once they cocoon and hatch as moths of course!

 

[SSimsswiSS]

I fed off some monster hornworms last night to the parson's. They where hours from making the change to pupa. I had one extra after the big guys got a snack. So I fed the last one to a male panther, and he had to stretch to accommodate the meal.