Favoritos de chrisseager

The butterfly in the chrysalis in a jar emerged today. Rather surprised and happy to find out what's been eating the broad beans 😁🎉
Here's the observation of the eggs being laid ...
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/183328759
Here is the observation of the "grub" ... https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/189091463

~4.5mm long (body & head)

Now, looking at the dorsal view, you wouldn't expect this to be anything other than fairly normal.

But the profile view shows a pronotal lobe with spines emminating from it.

This isn't a singular abnormallity. We found about 6 on one night, and have found them in the past.

I thought it'd make it easy to find, but my searches revealed nada!

I'm scanning family photo's and found this on one of our holidays.
I distinctly remember thinking it must be a painted dragon it was so colourful 😉

Date and location are a bit of a guess I'm sorry. Arkaroola is a big place! But it was on the rocks up the side of a water hole near a camp/picnic area.

If I find better photo's, or dates/locations I'll update.

~6mm long larva.
We caught a couple of larvae & a couple of adults together on a Kidney Saltbush.

When I flipped this one over to get a ventral shot, the adult ran over to help flip it up. (2nd to last shot)
When I did the same with the adult, the larva came over to help the adult flip over! (last shot)

I've never seen inverts help each other like that before!