Do Caterpillars have sex?
  
Don Herbison-Evans,
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Caterpillars are the immature forms of their species, like children in our species. Only the adult moths and butterflies can have sex. However: the developing sexual organs may be seen through the transparent skin of some caterpillar species, typically as a pair of yellow organs, one each side of the dark dorsal heart line


male

female
Caterpillars of Cephrenes augiades

Butterflies and moths have their gender defined by the chromosomes that they are born with, so whether an individual insect is male of female is determined before it is even laid as an egg.

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(updated 31 December 2008, 5 January 2014)