Tobacco hornworn, which also feeds on tomatoes and will feed on plants in the family Solanaceae. You can put it in a cup and feed it tomato leaves, eggplant leaves, potato leaves, etc. Keep it in a jar and keep it lit for 24 hours a day and you will accelerate the life cycle. As long as there is light and food it will eat and grow. No need to provide water for it, it gets moisture from the plant leaves.

When it stops eating and you can see the heart slowly pulsating at the top of the abdomen, put some loose soil in the cup and it will bury itself to pupate.

It puts the lotion on its skin....

I never post, but this one got to me. Well played sir, well played.

Been gardening for 3 years. I pretty much know the top 3 bastids that eat my tomatoes/peppers/etc. That caterpillar is one of them.

Hate those damn things. Just had almost half of a plant eaten in one night a month or so ago by the biggest one I've ever seen. Couldn't get the bastid off the plant with a stick, then he started fighting back thrashing and hitting the stick with its head I made sure he was extra dead.

I've always called them cut worms, and found them on tomatoes, squash, peppers plants. Bass and bluegill love them



LOL

It's not the same as a cutworm. Cutworms usually cut the stem of the plant just above soil level. They can not cut down a grown tomato plant, not do they try to my knowledge. Small vegetable plants are all fair game.

Oh how i hatethose things.

Kill it, it will eat your entire tomato plant

Agreed. They can be hard to find, so just look for a lot of poop all over the tomato plant. That gives away their location most of the time. And yes, I said poop. *giggles*

I always called them tomato bugs. Nasty critters. I had a 18 foot modesto ash tree with a canopy as big as a toyota on it in california that they stripped bare in one day. All I found on it when I got home from work was one of those. I assume there were more. It took that tree 2 years to recover.

Always called them tomato worms (guess why?). If I find them, I cut them in half with sissors. Hate to use pesticide on plants I plan to eat. Although Sevin Dust will work and it easily washes off the fruit.

My chickens take care of em for the most part, rarely do I have to pull em off the plants.

If you have a yellow jacket nest nearby, don't don't mess with it. I understand they will kill the cats naturally??

"Cut worms" are a whole different and unrelated caterpillar. That's why we have scientific names for things.

Most of the stinging wasps are predators, and many will hunt caterpillars. A number of tiny parasitic wasps also attack them.