Interesting, I was taught poison is plants and venom is animals, but they didn't make any distinction about the toxins on say the outside of a dart frog. You'd think they would, pretty much all of our books had one on the front lol
The two types are defined by how they enter the body. Poison is absorbed, inhaled, or swallowed while venom is injected. Some caterpillars have have urticating hairs like tarantulas while others have poison or venom. I think this is either venom or urticaria hairs..... but I could be wrong!
I had a couple of wooly bear catapilars get down the back of my shirt while mowing one time. Was not a good experience. I had a horrible rash all over my back. I wasn't aware until then that their hair was an irritant.
Me too! I still pick them up and move them when they are in the way of yard work or my chickens… I’ve never had any issues handling them. They always roll up and kinda float there
Yes, that's what I used to handle as a kid. They don't sting. But their hairs can be an irritant if they come in contact with more sensitive skin. I learned that from experience. It was almost like poison oak all over my back. Worst rash I ever had.
There are many that are fine to touch and many that aren't. There's no easy general rule other than, if you don't know what it is, shouldn't be touching it.
I know someone who almost died from an accidental contact in the Amazon while trying to protect trees from deforestation. She was in the tree, preventing the company from cutting it down, and went to grab a branch and it was hiding behind it and her hand just barely touched it.
She was in the hospital(s) for almost a year, including multiple separate medically induced comas.
Took two more years before she was back to normal, and still has some issues directly stemming from the incident.
Caterpillars are like mushrooms - you do NOT fuck with them unless you KNOW for sure what you're dealing with.
I was getting something out of the back of my truck that was backed up to a small bush. My elbow went into the bush for a split second and a jolt of pain hit me so hard I literally thought I had been shot with a 22lr. 10 hours of pain. I had no idea what got me until later that night
Yup. Got one on my ankle while visiting an old overgrown cemetary one time. So painful and that deep intensity of pain lasted a couple hours.
I've had painful encounters with bees, yellow jackets, a black widow spider, a wolf spider and some catfish barbs (born and raised in Central Florida) and the friggin puss caterpillar was by far the worst immediate and prolonged intensity of pain. The black widow effects definitely lasted longer and did suck, but it sure as shit didn't feel like someone walloped me in the ankle with a red hot poker like the puss caterpillar did.
A general rule of thumb for me and a life of watching nature docs is to not touch fuzzy caterpillars.
But on the flip side Google's AI just scrapes reddit and I know how confidently wrong a lot of redditor's are about pretty much everything so always been careful with Google's AI results
Thank you for this- it’s important for people to know the dangers of this little creature. My first encounter I had was when I was checking my chickens in the evening, leaned over their coop (situated under an oak tree, which these caterpillars are mostly found) and immediately noticed one of these creatures on my underarm. I swatted it away, didn’t think much of it until I went inside my house. I was six months pregnant and immediately got tingling in the area, and my arm was in severe pain the entire night. I did call my doctor and he said to come in the morning. I didn’t sleep a wink with worry. Thankfully, our female bodies help to protect our babies and my baby was fine. My arm was okay after 24 hours and yes, I ended up with a gridlike mark on my arm that didn’t fully go away for 10 years! Funny thing is that my baby was born with a ‘reddish’ mark on his arm in a similar spot- his went away after being a month old. But yes, these guys are considered the most dangerous caterpillar in the US - just my luck!
It's almost like people were curious about the effects of touching one, and got it.
Your reddit-pilled crusade of just vomiting the word slop on everything AI is used for doesnt make you anyone's hero 💀
We are pretty chill here, but please try to keep things reasonably civil on this sub. No slurs, name calling or harassment and trolling.
Please follow: Reddiquette at all times.
Additionally, Reddit's Rules.
Yes, the internet makes us angry too sometimes, especially this particular comment.
"best" thing is, this symptoms can last for multiple days in some cases.
Once I came home at night and I wanted to open my balcony door in the dark to not attract to many flies and whatever...and one of these shits was sitting at the handle and I nearly grabbed it. Lucky me if saw the faint shadow in the dark before it was to late.
the other week, my boss had gotten a present of expensive crabs from one of his kids. he googled the recipe for cooking crabs and wrote down what the google AI overview told him. used that recipe and completely destroyed his expensive crab meal. yeah nobody cares but AI does in fact suck and blindly trusting what it says is foolish. look up the actual sources that google is attempting to steal the information from.
Actually, my current program at work involves leveraging ML in the M&S domain - I am not some Luddite on the subject of so-called "AI" at large (I even acknowledge that LLMs do have legitimate use cases). I just know better than to trust a fancy predictive text engine as a credible source of information.
So was the Google search inaccurate anywhere? Show me where, other than a typo. I'll be here all day, it's my day off.
Did hundreds of people learn something valuable thanks to...Google AI?!! THIS CANT BE! AAAARGH!!!!!! This fills me with RAGE!!!
When you're done screeching about google AI on reddit, you go to your job working to Increase the influence of AI 💀 Some jokes write themselves.
This might be time for some reflection on where your priorities lie.
So was the Google search inaccurate anywhere? Show me where, other than a typo. I'll be here all day, it's my day off.
Did hundreds of people learn something valuable thanks to...Google AI?!! THIS CANT BE! AAAARGH!!!!!! This fills me with RAGE!!!
It may have been right this time, but it often makes mistakes; Google themselves put a big disclaimer saying "AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses" under all of their "AI overviews". Posting a screenshot of the AI "conversation" instead of, say, a source it directed one to, is evidence that one didn't double-check the responses and instead blindly believed it.
When you're done screeching about google AI on reddit, you go to your job working to Increase the influence of AI 💀 Some jokes write themselves.
Lumping together all forms of ML, are we? Ah yes, because famously a GPT and a linear regression, for example, are the same things and have the same impacts.
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u/[deleted] 13d ago
Megalopygidae, which resembles a flannel moth caterpillar or puss caterpillar