A Sphingidae (Sphinx moth), these handsome green and brown moths look spray-painted in camo colors, so they’re much easier to find in the middle of a city when they’re trying to blend in with painted concrete like this one.
Hello! Thanks for the submission! You’ve found one of the relatively common
Theretra japonica
which is a kind of hawk moth/Sphingidae or Sphinx Moth. They leave the bushes they grew up on to wander and find a place to pupate in soft soil, but in the cities that usually means they wander onto concrete sidewalks and lose their way. If you find one wandering like this, you can take it home and pop it in a flowerpot of potting soil and it will probably dig down and pupate, emerging a while later as a lovely striped moth.
“Hi there. We found this caterpillar in September 2016 in central Tokyo. Crawling along the path, about a meter away from bushes in boxes. No other insects (not even flies or mosquitoes) around. Can you tell me what it is? Thanks for such an interesting site. -Z”
your picture is clear and your description accurate enough (about a meter away from bushes in boxes) for me to identify it as a Hawkmoth/Sphinx Moth caterpillar,
Theretra japonica コスズメ (”Kosuzume”) (no common name in English)
http://tokyoinsects2.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-801.html which was on its way to pupating in some dirt away from the plants it had been feeding on as a caterpillar! These guys often get lost wandering across concrete, because they are trying to find some soft soil to dig down into to pupate underground. They’re really just not evolved for living in a concrete-paved city, poor things. But this is still one of the most common sphinx moth species even in the most urban areas and the two big eyespots on each side with the darker brown stripe along the top is a giveaway that you found one of these guys. Thanks again for your great photo and hope this clears up a mystery you’ve been wondering about for a while.
Back after a brief hiatus, it’s a fresh BotD! This Abbott’s sphinx (Sphecodina abbottii) came to the light last night and hung out until the wee hours :-).
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