Atlas Moth Documentation - The Discovery

 Any caterpillar hobbyist, who rears the caterpillar to observe the growth and development to pupation and eclosion, would have a sort of wish list. There would be certain species that is likely to make it onto most hobbyists's wishlist, even if it may not be on the top of the list. 

Most hobbyists look for butterfly caterpillars and shun moth types. However there are certain moth caterpillars that are also attractive and sought after. If it is rare, or have beautiful markings, or extraordinary development stages, you can bet the caterpillar hobbyist would be looking for it. one such moth would be the Attacus Atlas, the Atlas Moth. It isnt that easy to find it in Singapore, and most of the sightings that we could read about, is in the far north in Yishun, Kranji, Woodlands etc. 

At a friend's gathering in April 2021, we chatted about my new hobby during this covid period, which is caterpillar rearing. A friend mentioned she saw the biggest caterpillar of her life and continued to gesture what looks like an arm length. While I calmly said no caterpillar reaches that kind of size, she was insistent and showed me a video of the below screenshot. Even before she showed the video, I already asked, is it white and green?

True enough, she had seen the caterpillars of the Atlas moth, and looked like they were in the last instar. of course they were not an arm's length but probably the shock of seeing 12-15cm caterpillars for the first time was a shock and magnified the impression. There were three of them from her memory. I immediately asked for the location, and how long ago. She had seen it exactly 7 days ago, in the west. We quickly changed our plans for the day and headed to the location to check it out, even though we knew the chances were little, given the gap in seven days, they would have likely wandered off in pupation or eaten by predators. 

We managed to locate the site and combed it thoroughly plus expanded the search site. Unfortunately, after 2 hours, we couldn't find anything, not even possible cocoons. We took pics of the host plant and left. We subsequently identified the plant as Ardisia elliptica. 

Fast forward five weeks later, we went back to the same location, in search of another host plant, but decided to check out the site again. While we didn't see sightings of the humongous caterpillars, some eggs on the topside of a leaf caught my eye. I was a little doubtful as they were not sticking to the leaves, and my understanding is the behaviour is to lay the eggs on the underside. But sure enough, with some flipping around, we found more eggs and laid in the classical fashion of Atlas moth. 

It feels like a prayer answered! To finally found Atlas Moth and from egg stage! In this blog, we will document the process of rearing 9 Atlas Moth caterpillars from eggs, to the best of our layman ability.