If you live in the Midwest then you've probably heard at least once that you can forecast the upcoming winter through the help of a woolly worm bear also known as a fuzzy bear caterpillar or a hedgehog caterpillar since it curls up into a tight ball of spiky bristles and pretends to be dead whenever threatened or disturbed.
They are found frequently in autumn migrating to a dark and sheltered spot where they can hibernate as larvae for the winter. Are you curious about their legend and how true is it? Keep reading on!
Where Are Woolly Worms Found?
The Woolly Bear Worm Caterpillar, "Pyrrharctia Isabella" is found all over the North American continent from the cold wastes of Alaska, Canada, the rest of the United States, and Mexico. They are well-known and common though most people mistakenly believe there is only one type of woolly bear but in fact, there are 8 or more species in the U.S. alone.
If you want to look for one, ideal spots include under logs, large rocks, or other dark and safe areas that offer protection from predators and the elements.
What Does Their Name Mean?
Before we begin It should be clarified that despite their pet namesake of “woolly worm”, they aren't a worm at all. The woolly "worm" is a caterpillar. What's the difference? The difference is worms are unchanging but caterpillars eventually go into metamorphosis to transform into something more regally majestic, usually a butterfly or a moth.
Nonetheless, the namesake of “worm” has stuck heavily and we won't blame you for continuing to call them worms. Woolly is of course due to their short, dense, and hairy bristles giving it a look similar to a creeping wool yarn while the bear is in relation of them commonly being found in Bear Mountain State Park in New York.
What Do Woolly Bear Worms Look Like?
Of course, you can't look for them without knowing what they actually look like. In terms of their appearance, they have 13 distinct segments which may be either rusty brown or black although the black occurs on the edges and rust in the middle.
They are fuzzy with dense and stiff hair bristles thus contributing to their name of "woolly". They are actually the larvae of a moth species but the larvae are more widely known than the adults known as the "Isabella Tiger Moth". That's a pretty cool name huh? We assure you that they look even cooler.
What Does All-Black Woolly Bear Mean?
Contrary to popular belief, despite having 8 different species, caterpillar worms that are all-black, all-white, or yellow "woolly caterpillars" in fact are not woolly caterpillars. They belong to a distinctly different species and are not a part of the woolly worm winter legend lore.
So, if you spot a "woolly worm" that is entirely black, white, or brown it is neither forecasting an apocalyptic winter nor a scorching summer.
Despite the great interest in the caterpillar stage of the woolly bear, very few people actually know what they continue to grow up to be. After wintering in a chosen spot, the fuzzy caterpillar awakens on a warm spring day and continues to feed for a while on their plant food of choice such as plantain, dandelion, nettles, etc before they find a suitable spot to cocoon.
We wouldn't blame you for not knowing they would undergo chrysalis and metamorphose either. After all, most people are only interested in butterflies and hummingbirds, not moths!
Metamorphosis
After the pupation process of two weeks, from each cocoon arises an orange-yellow moth with a 2-inch wingspan diameter and three longitudinal rows of small black dots on its stomach that are aptly named Isabella Tiger Moths.
Isabella tiger moths usually rest with their wings acting like a roof over their bodies or flat out to the sides with their forewings being tanned or yellow. Their hindwings are lighter and orange in females and each foreleg has a reddish-orange tinge. They are usually active at night throughout the summer.
The Woolly Worm Legend
The myth of the woolly bear worms has been around since the colonial times. As with most folklore, there are different folklore tale versions of this and we will recount all of them for you, a total of three in fact. So keep on reading!
Oh and since the weather phenomena can vary from locality to locality, the folklore tales does also ask you to start looking for your own local procession of woolly bears instead of depending on or procuring the woolies from an entirely different town.
In the first version, it is stated that the severity of the upcoming winter is indicated by the thickness of a woolly bear caterpillar's coat. So if it's very woolly, it will be a cold winter indeed, else not if the wool is thinner than what you would normally expect of them.
Since the color of the caterpillar isn't mentioned in this lore, it is often more tolerantly negligent in terms of the actual color and appearance of the worm aside from the thickness of the "coat" or hair bristles.
Second Version
In the second version, it deals with the direction of the woolly bear caterpillars' migratory travel. It states that if the woolly bear's crawling heads in a more southward direction, they are trying to escape the cold winter conditions of the north a few months well in advance.
On the other hand, if the woolly bears are crawling towards a northward path, it would indicate a mild winter and they would prefer to go up rather than deal with the hotter temperatures of the south.
Third Version
In the third and final version which is also the most popular of the three, the amount of black bristle band sections on the woolly bears during the fall varies proportionately with the severity of the coming winter in your locality or more specifically, the locality where the caterpillar is found. Longer bands mean colder, snowier, and more severe winters.
Similarly, the middle rusty-brown band section is associated with a milder upcoming winter the longer it is. Furthermore, the position of the longest dark band is also supposed to indicate which part of the winter will be colder or harder with the head referring to the beginning and the tail referring to the end of the winter months.
An Interesting Fact
Did you know that the woolly bear caterpillar has 13 segments to its body? The traditional forecasters symbolize this by saying that the segments correspond to the 13 weeks of total winter experienced in the northern hemisphere.
Though, having 13 segments isn't that unique as a caterpillar's body is generally divided into at least 11 segments excluding the head with 3 being thoracic segments near the head and 8 or more being abdominal segments extending all the way down to its rear clasper with 3 set of permanent legs for their thoracic segments and prolegs on the rest of the segments.
How Did The Woolly Bear Caterpillar Become Famous?
This folklore tale may have existed essentially forever for a few centuries but it didn't grow into popularity until recently. In the fall of 1948, Dr. Charles Howard Curran, a curator of entomology from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City took his colleagues, their wives, and a reporter friend 40 miles north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park.
They caught as many specimens as they possibly could and conducted a small study of the woolly bear caterpillars. Dr. Curran counted the rusty brown band of 15 different specimens of woolly bears and then made a prediction for the severity of the winter
How It Picked Up Steam
After making a prediction for the winter, this news story was published in the New York Herald Tribune through his friend and reporter. This article was then picked up by the national press and the rest of the story is how you know it to be.
Dr. Curran continued his experiments for a good portion of the next eight years and attempted to scientifically prove the folktale of Bear Mountain. The resulting publicity made the woolly bears some of the most recognizable caterpillars in North America at the expense of its more adult form.
Do Woolly Bear Caterpillar Predict The Winter?
While it's evident that there are some things at play with the woolly worm caterpillar, they are at best just that, a folklore. While there is in fact, a link between the severity of the winter and the brown band of a woolly caterpillar, rather the number of brown hairs is associated with the age of the caterpillar.
Since the caterpillars shed their skins six times before reaching adult size, with each successive molt their color changes to a slightly more reddish and less black. Thus, in other words, it signifies how late the woolly bears got started in the spring so it does say something about a heavy winter, albeit of the past.
In addition, there are approximately 250 species of moths in the North American continental area that are easily mistaken for woolly worms. With each different tiger moth species larvae having a slightly different color pattern and variation.
The variance and variety from each of these different species' slight changes in color patterns and hair coverings are then taken as different color variations of the woolly bear worm caterpillars predicting the weather by confirming to its local vicinity.
What's The Deal With The Coat?
The fur is called setae and as far as its deal is, it's how nature intended for it to be able to survive cold weather, not by physically rebuffing against the cold weather. But instead by helping them freeze more controllably. The hibernating process of the woolly bears is truly remarkable.
Once the caterpillars are settled in, they hibernate and create an organic natural antifreeze called glycerol. While the cold temperatures freeze the caterpillar safely bit by bit thanks to its cold, the interior of their cells is protected by the hemolymph and natural anti-freeze frozen which allows them to survive temperatures as low as -90°F (-68°C) and can survive an entire winter encased in a solid ice cube.
Where Are They Travelling?
So if they can't predict the winter by the color or the thickness of their coat, what about their travels? As far as their traveling is concerned, the woolly bear caterpillars are simply traveling and moving about in search of their own opinionated most perfect spot for curling up and hibernate throughout the winter.
The locations where they spend the winter are usually under a bark, rock, or a fallen log.
Rest assured, while most species of caterpillars may cause skin rashes and dermatitis upon contact, this species does not cause rashes or anything.
There is no need to be afraid of touching the hair of this caterpillar species granted that you don't have hyper-sensitive skin instead, they simply have a tendency to curl up into a ball and hide whenever disturbed.
However, since the hairs or spines of other moth species caterpillars can sting you, we do not recommend touching any hairy caterpillars no matter how soft and fuzzy they may look unless you are absolutely sure about the species and your own skin sensitivity.
Woolly Worm Is A Resident of The Arctic
Their extreme cold adaptive ability which we mentioned previously shows up as pretty handy, particularly in the Arctic. Wait, the Arctic? That's right.
While they can be found all across the North American continent a group of the woolly worms can live their whole lives in the far north in the polar regions of the Arctic on the mainland and northern islands of Canada as well as the vegetated icy cold coastal strip of Greenland.
The woolly worms there live in a strange state of slow motion with the rest of their kin caterpillars becoming months in 2-4 weeks while the arctic woolly worms take at least 14 years before they are prepared for chrysalis and metamorphosis.
Several woolly bear festivals are held in America. These festivals help the local economy, build a sense of community, and add to the animal's mystique. Banner Elk in North Carolina has held an annual Woolly Worm Festival highlighted by a caterpillar race in October for over 40 years. They also feature crafts and foods with the winning caterpillar being used to predict the winter weather.
Vermilion, Ohio, and Beattyville, Kentucky also features their unique take on woolly worm races but also feature woolly bear costume contests, vendors, and live music. More cities such as Oil City, Pennsylvania, and Little Valley, New York, have also started holding their own unique Woolly Bear Jamboree and Weekend since this decade.
