Aug 11, 2026 · 17 min · 8 segments
Bob chats with naturalist Jim McCormac about the exciting world of caterpillars. Jim gives details about Caterpillar Roundup. This Arc of Appalachia free program is offered on August 29th from 12 -4…
Jim McCormacGuestBobHost
Two talks ago, you ha- you, you were part, uh, one of the speakers, but we were talking about Baltimore orioles on your show.
So, like Baltimore orioles and most songbirds, we wouldn't even have were it not for caterpillars, virtually all of which come off native plants, and this is profound.
So, you know, this mantra of go native, you know, grow native plants and whatnot, take that further.
The native fauna that was here long before we were, virtually all of it is, is tightly wedded to native plants, and, uh, very, very little will eat most non-native plants.
As a matter of fact, a little point of trivia for those of you listening, uh, if you put a poll out, what is the largest group of herbivores in Ohio, or just use our own state here, by biomass? I suspect everyone probably would say white-tailed deer.
Yeah.
[laughs] I think that would be a good guess.
Yeah.
There's 640,000 or thereabouts in Ohio, and each one weighs a lot, and if you took all those deer and put them in a huge field and piled them up, it'd be a massive pile of herbivores.
If you could somehow go around mid-September when caterpillars are at their peak abundance and largest size and somehow could harvest every one of those caterpillars and pile them up next to the deer, it'd dwarf the deer pile.
Some plants are distasteful to deer and all that sort of thing, but with caterpillars, it's far more of a tightly wedded connection.
The most famous example of this would be the monarch butterfly, which everyone wants to help, and that's a good thing.
But monarchs, as everyone here knows I'm sure, only milkweeds, uh, members of the milkweed family, as caterpillars, and that's what matters is what they eat as caterpillars if you really truly wanna conserve the Lepidoptera, the moths and butterflies.
So that's an easy one to understand, and that's hyper-specialization, and that hyper-specialization in the world of caterpillars is, is more common than generalization.
So I was gonna go back to your Baltimore oriole that you talked about two shows ago.
Mm-hmm.
Two talks ago, you ha- you, you were part, uh, one of the speakers, but we were talking about Baltimore orioles on your show.
So, like Baltimore orioles and most songbirds, we wouldn't even have were it not for caterpillars, virtually all of which come off native plants, and this is profound.
So, you know, this mantra of go native, you know, grow native plants and whatnot, take that further.
The native fauna that was here long before we were, virtually all of it is, is tightly wedded to native plants, and, uh, very, very little will eat most non-native plants.
As a matter of fact, a little point of trivia for those of you listening, uh, if you put a poll out, what is the largest group of herbivores in Ohio, or just use our own state here, by biomass? I suspect everyone probably would say white-tailed deer.
Yeah.
[laughs] I think that would be a good guess.
Yeah.
There's 640,000 or thereabouts in Ohio, and each one weighs a lot, and if you took all those deer and put them in a huge field and piled them up, it'd be a massive pile of herbivores.
If you could somehow go around mid-September when caterpillars are at their peak abundance and largest size and somehow could harvest every one of those caterpillars and pile them up next to the deer, it'd dwarf the deer pile.
Some plants are distasteful to deer and all that sort of thing, but with caterpillars, it's far more of a tightly wedded connection.
The most famous example of this would be the monarch butterfly, which everyone wants to help, and that's a good thing.
But monarchs, as everyone here knows I'm sure, only milkweeds, uh, members of the milkweed family, as caterpillars, and that's what matters is what they eat as caterpillars if you really truly wanna conserve the Lepidoptera, the moths and butterflies.
So that's an easy one to understand, and that's hyper-specialization, and that hyper-specialization in the world of caterpillars is, is more common than generalization.
So I was gonna go back to your Baltimore oriole that you talked about two shows ago.
Mm-hmm.
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