The common moth Pyrrharctia isabella is known by different common names at its two main life stages. The adult is the Isabella tiger moth…
Pyrrharctia Isabella - Isabella Tiger Moth
…and the larva is called the banded woolly bear.
According to folklore, the severity of the coming winter can be predicted by studying the woolly bear caterpillar. It is believed the longer the brown band in the center of the woolly bear the milder the winter will be.
Banded Woolly Bear
From the Old Farmers Almanac
In the fall of 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, took his wife 40 miles north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars.
Dr. Curran collected as many caterpillars as he could in a day, determined the average number of reddish-brown segments, and forecast the coming winter weather through a reporter friend at The New York Herald Tribune.
Dr. Curran’s experiment, which he continued over the next eight years, attempted to prove scientifically a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain. The resulting publicity made the woolly bear the most recognizable caterpillar in North America.
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Between 1948 and 1956, Dr. Curran’s average brown-segment counts ranged from 5.3 to 5.6 out of the 13-segment total, meaning that the brown band took up more than a third of the woolly bear’s body. As those relatively high numbers suggested, the corresponding winters were milder than average.
But Curran was under no scientific illusion: He knew that his data samples were small. Although the experiments popularized and, to some people, legitimized folklore, they were simply an excuse for having fun. Curran, his wife, and their group of friends escaped the city to see the foliage each fall, calling themselves The Original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear.
Thirty years after the last meeting of Curran’s society, the woolly bear brown-segment counts and winter forecasts were resurrected by the nature museum at Bear Mountain State Park. The annual counts have continued, more or less tongue in cheek, since then.
For the past 10 years, Banner Elk, North Carolina, has held an annual “Woolly Worm Festival” each October, highlighted by a caterpillar race. Retired mayor Charles Von Canon inspects the champion woolly bear and announces his winter forecast.
Something to think about – I read where the number of brown hairs on a woolly bear caterpillar are actually related to how late it got started in the spring which begs the question, is the color of a woolly bear predicting the winter to come or reminding us of the winter just past?
Photos best viewed in high definition!!
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When one tugs at a single thing in nature; he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
