I found a caterpillar today

I was tidying the garden it may have been amongst the leaves, do they hibernate? I thought it was dead but it moved.

Hi Violet. The caterpillar stage is the in between stage of moths and butterfly. The ones I've seen here don't hibernate. They just hatch.. eat... eat.. eat... and form a crystalis and then hatch into a butterfly or moth.

Yes, some species of moth and butterfly do hibernate as caterpillars

I didn't know that. Don't they freeze if they're just under a leaf?

Deepwaters wrote:I didn't know that. Don't they freeze if they're just under a leaf?

They're clever little things. They find a place that is protected from the worst of the weather, like under a pile of leaves. We quite often get butterflies in the shed in spring, as the caterpillars have crawled in and over wintered there. I have to keep an eye out for them or the shed dwelling spiders have them for lunch.

It's a whole new world out there!

Yes I thought they's freeze to death in the winter, even tucked under leaves, I wasn't sure what stage they hibernated at as I saw a documentary once by the lovely David Attenborough about the butterflies who hibernate as butterflies, they must all have different sleep arrangements for different climates and breeds.