Insect and Spider Identification: CLOSED: Unknown Hornworm, 5 by eakspeasy

eakspeasy wrote:
I found this hornworm on my Pentas. I know that the tomato (Manduca quinquemaculata) and tobacco (Manduca sexta) hornworms will feed on Pentas (and apparently completely ignore the tomato and tobacco growing nearby!!) and last year it was quite a battle for me with those two species.

This one, however, is different. The prolegs are orange, not black/white, the spots are more prevalent than the striping, there are six stripes connecting to a longer head-to-tail lateral stripe, and a purpleish horn. It also demonstrates a strange behavior when disturbed... instead of arching up it's head as if to beg mercy before you squash the evil out of it, it pulls its head *in*, almost as if to make it appear larger and pronounce the eyespots on top, reducing its overall length by ~1/4".

Location: Nehrling Gardens, Gotha, Orange County, Florida