An exotic caterpillar

At least, it looks exotic to me. I found it the other day sitting on a wooden pole in the countryside in the east of The Netherlands, which is not all that exotic a country to me.

It is the caterpillar of the lackey moth (Malacosoma neustria), ringelrups in Dutch:


Olympus Stylus 1s, 42mm, ISO200, f8, 1/50s

As so often, this very colourful caterpillar will change into a rather modest moth:


Photo by Algirdas, from Wikimedia Commons, under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

This is one of the most colourful caterpillars I have ever seen in The Netherlands, and also the first time I have seen this species.

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