What will this caterpillar on my eggplants turn into?

[Beth_B]

They are not doing significant damage, just some small holes in the lower leaves. The plants themselves appear to be flowering and fruiting just fine. Sorry, crappy camera phone and this was the clearest photo I could get. I have several other plants in the nightshade family but this is the only place I've seen these little critters. They are on the underside of some of the leaves.

 

[Fernsdaddy]

In my garden it would turn into compost. I'm not found of caterpillars in my veggie garden.

 

[Beth_B]

Me neither, normally. But only a few plants are having a few little holes chewed into them and otherwise the baby eggplants are growing nicely. So I don't want to squish these little guys if they're going to turn into something either benign or beneficial.

 

[Trellum]

I think I have seen this kind of caterpillar, it looks like those caterpillars you find in some trees and if you touch them they cause a really nasty skin irritation. Not sure if these are the same of those,but when a caterpillar has hairs like that I can't help but to shudder.

 

[Chuck]

I wouldn't worry so much about the caterpillar as I would about getting an infestation of mealy bugs, of which that cotton ball looking thing in the picture is. The caterpillar isn't the one making the little holes. He is the one eating the edge of the leaves.

 

[marlingardener]

It's a moth caterpillar, not a butterfly one. I looked and looked through our books, and the only one I found that was even faintly similar was the Gypsy Moth caterpillar, but I'm pretty sure that isn't it.

 

[Chuck]

It's a moth caterpillar, not a butterfly one. I looked and looked through our books, and the only one I found that was even faintly similar was the Gypsy Moth caterpillar, but I'm pretty sure that isn't it.

The closest I came to it was a tent caterpillar of some sort. Like you I am pretty certain it is a moth and not a butterfly. Most beautiful butterfly's come from a brightly colored caterpillar

 

[marlingardener]

Yes, Chuck, the moth caterpillars are hairy, the butterfly caterpillars not, but they are more colorful. This one has me baffled completely!

 

[Chuck]

Yes, Chuck, the moth caterpillars are hairy, the butterfly caterpillars not, but they are more colorful. This one has me baffled completely!

Like I posted earlier, the mealy bug poses a much bigger threat. I am surprised no one has commented on it. You can see the damage and even see two in the picture plus some eggs

 

[Beth_B]

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't know about hairy caterpillars becoming moths...I have a plethora of different moths around here. I'll go to the MSU website and try to identify it.
Mealy bugs. Great. I should have picked up on that! I just went over the plants (just three) and removed the few white fluffy things I saw. I'll keep my eye for those and perhaps spray.

OK I have been all over google images. Have seen nothing exactly like this (hairy, pale green with black spots) but Gypsy moth caterpillars are vaguely similar. Except the color is wrong, as @marlingardener points out. Maybe a regional variant?

 

[Corzhens]

That caterpillar is the pest that eats the young leaves of our lemon tree. But I'm talking of small caterpillars. That one in the photo is a big one that we only find in the mango tree. I guess it is a specie of butterfly although I'm not sure. There's another specie of caterpillar that inhabits our mango tree, the caterpillar has venom and very itchy when it lands on the skin.

 

[Marck]

The larva (caterpillar) in the OP looks similar to that of the Fall Webworm Moth (Hyphantria cunea), also known as the Mulberry Moth, this species in the Tiger Moth Family (Arctiidae, or Erebidae, Arctiinae) is known to use several hundred different larval food plants, however Nightshades (Solanum spp.) including Eggplant (S. melongena) are not listed among them, at least in the sources I visited.

Several possibilities. 1) The caterpillar pictured is not Hyphantria cunea. 2) The host plant range of Hyphantria cunea is not completely known. 3) Hyphantria cunea caterpillars may have traveled or fallen from a tree onto the Eggplant.