Sick or morphing caterpillars?

I ask this question because it has been my experience that when my cats are releasing a liquid substance from either their mouth or bowels, it is not a good sign.

But, I can't be sure. Sometimes when one of my cats does this, they do seem to recover. Or at least they seem to go on to thrive, grow, and morph.

But I have also had butterflies that never emerged or were deformed. I didn't keep careful note of which cats these were. Were they the ones that appeared sick earlier in their cat stage? I don't know.

This is something that I deal with constantly with some of the cats I find and/or raise. And it seems that it can affect ALL cats, not just some species. It is either a parasite or a virus causing the cats to be sick, from which they often die. Here is a link to an interesting website about this:

http://www.livemonarch.com/advanced.htm

My latest observations:

I have been having horrible luck with Sulphur cats lately. When I find them, they are already infected with something. Not sure if it is a parasite or a virus. But I did find a bug in one of the small containers (that was NOT there originally) that I was raising a cat in. And there was a hole in the dead cat's body. So it looks like a parasite got that one and it had emerged from the cat's body. But other times it is a virus. The symptoms seem to be very similar when the cats are first sick.

What to do about it? I strongly recommend isolating the sick cat immediately. If it IS a sick cat, you don't want the disease/parasite spread to healthy cats. I wonder if this is why labs raise cats individually in separate cages?

I'd like to hear what your experiences have been with this issue. It might be good to exchange observations concerning this and what to look for or signs that something my be wrong.

Thanks for giving this issue its own thread, becky...the monarch cat in my care that had been releasing a few drops of dark green fluid seems okay, for now. He rested for the past 14 hours, then woke up and ate a little, has crawled to the top of the cage, and now appears to be laying down the foundation for his chrysalis. I'll have to keep an eye on him, though. I would have isolated him, but two of his cagemates have formed their J's on the roof of the cage, and the slightest motion (even when I tried to carefully open the zipper) made them curl up defensively. So, I decided I should leave them be. My fingers are crossed.

Sorry to hear about your sulphur cats...when I consider that most of the butterflies I see in my yard were "wild-reared," it just amazes me. They beat such long odds out there to become beautiful butterflies!

Jess

Glad to hear your cat seems to be okay, Jess!

The Sulphur pictured in my first post seemed sick several days ago. Excreting from it's mouth. It laid around doing very little and then about a day later started eating again. It has gotten considerably bigger since. So not sure what is going on with it. It seems fine right now. Though I had this happen before and the cat died just as it was pupating into a chrysalis.

One weird thing about Sulphurs and some other species of caterpillars is that I don't see the different instar changes. I don't see the skin being shed at all. I haven't seen it on the Giant Swallowtails either. I know they often eat their shed skin, but I have never seen a Sulphur shed it's skin .... not ever! So .... am wondering if anyone has seen this happen?

Hi Becky-
Weird that this should come up! I had 3 sulphur cats in a cage and came out today and they were all dead. They were at different stages in their development .......I threw the cage into the pool to get cooked by chlorine. :)

Adrienne

hmmmmmmm all sounds so strange. I don't know how we will know for sure unless we can see something. This is one reason why I am making cages with embrodirey hoops and the netting material. The material cost about 50 cents to make a cage so I just replace the netting and reuse cleaned bleached hoops.

Could it possibly be off gassing from new plastic containers or synthetic fabrics ?
Both are made from petroleum junk and could certainly toxify their environment.

(back to lurking and trying to learn )
~Shirley

Becky- Nope, I've never seen any kind of morph with the Sulphurs. It is interesting...My cages are all from LiveMonarch.org and they have proved to be great...so hopefully it's not that. I was feeding them from a Cassia that I had taken out of my garden because I never had eggs hatch from it. Maybe somethings wrong with it. Oh well, it's toast now. I have other Sulphur cats in a different part of my Garden that are big and healthy now....A Mystery.

Donna B, put a picture of the hoop cages up when you finish, sound interesting.

I have experienced the release of fluids prior to some of my bfs making a chrystalis too. They went on to do fine. I wondered if it was just the release of additional fluids that weren't necessary for morphing. Most would be when they had climbed up the sides of a cage and rested a day prior to settling on a spot to start. This is a gross picture, but you can see the GST cat with the mess it made, and beside it the one that just climbed up before it did the same. After this group, I stopped using the large cage and started using the tubs like Debnes that make cleaning and disinfecting easier.

Sheila - Have these cats eclosed into butterflies yet?

Oh yes, they both went on to eclose to beauties. That pic was taken 6/20/07. I know they have done well because I haven't lost a GST and the group in that cage have already flown away.

Well, that's good to know! A bit of encouraging news indeed! :-) Thanks for sharing your experience!

Yes good news Sheila! I have also enjoyed more success with GSTs since I've taken them in. I will be looking out for new cats today, before and after my mom's 72nd BDay Party at my sisters in Justin. (Sheila you will get to meet my mom and sister on the 4th!)

Yesterday I went out and saw a 3rd instar BST and a few 2nd.. Being a mommy called me to leave before I could cage them. When I got back I emmediatly went out to cage them, and the 3rd instar cat had succomed to a preditor.. It was just hanging there:-(.. It was definatly not well, so I had to euthanize the poor thing.
Did save the other 3 though, whew!

Donna! I want to see the hoop cage too. I might need to make one of those, it sounds like it works well!

:-Deb