Hemileuca peninsularis means "half-white (moth) of the peninsula," referring to Baja California; the species is sometimes called the Baja Buck Moth. It looks like Hemileuca maia but, being less numerous and widespread, it's less variable. And, being Mexican, it's not received as much attention as the Hemileucas found further north.
Photo by Sbyers.
Kirby Wolfe photographed a male, female, and juvenile specimen of peninsularis; his photos were on Wikipedia once but he's reclaimed an exclusive copyright. This web site will respect his wishes and suggest you click here:
The caterpillar has that mauve-taupe color of maia whose last few meals--before they pupate and lose their mouths, or before they meet people like the writer of this post--were raspberry leaves, but the spines on its back form rosettes and it has a brownish stripe along the sides.
If you search the Internet for this blog you're likely to find a link to an old post at this web site that affirmed my opinion that Hemileucas look best when they're collected--trapped as they approach a calling female, gassed, and pinned in a box. Extinction is forever. Maybe we humans have no right to cause other species to go completely extinct, but that does not mean we have to let them live and breed where we live. Anyway, the thought of all the stingingworms these moths presumably did not produce pleases me.
(Don Ehlen's photo of H. peninsularis lined up in a box was removed from public domain and integrated into a collection documenting the variability of Hemileucas. People interested in these moths really should click through and see peninsularis compared with other species in the genus.)
Google shows no information about the life cycle of this moth.
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