Processional Catapillars

Walking accross our patio last weekend!!!
VERY DANGEROUS TO PETS

Yes horrid things will look out fo them thank you Les !

Must get my eyes tested. I read that as professional caterpillars

Well they are professional caterpillars LOL ! Prof !! at throwing hook like thorns at you and your poor pooch's !! i saw a dog's mouth fall of them and the swelling was so bad ! he could have died ! was not my pooch thank goodness

Flippin heck! It looks like a length of rope.

Nasty nasty things and the reason we turned down so many properties when buying due to their proximity to pine trees. Also harmful to humans and especially children or the infirm. Even standing on them can be dangerous as the spines can come into contact with skin/animals later.

Not everyone has a reaction, but if you do it can range from mild irritation to anaphylactic shock and clearly medical advice should be sought on contact.

Much much worse should you ingest the hairs, like a dog is likely to licking an irritation, or a child putting hands in its mouth...

This lot stretched, in a broken line having been run over, right across the track. I couldn't get them all in, as I don't have a wide angle lens on my camera.

Yes, very dangerous little things - quite beautiful, unlike the moths they turn into, but dangerous.

Try not to walk under or near any pine trees where you see the nests, from around November to March/April as the air will be full of the spines, as this is the time they are most active in the trees.

You may have seen these Caterpillars mentioned in an episode of Silent Witness, where the girl they were investigating in the program had died from, as Cave Bunny mentioned Anaphylactic Shock. Yes, they are in the UK too!

You get the same caterpillars living in oak trees in France.
While they are a danger to humans and pets, they provide a useful food source for hoopoes whose beaks are perfect for rooting out the chrysalis from the cracks in the ground where they go to pupate, and for birds such as golden orioles who will attack their nests in the trees.
The caterpillars eat pine needles of the tree where they nest, but not to the point of killing off the tree - when they sense it's getting worn out the moths will chose other pines to lay eggs in giving the tree time to recover. In wild areas they are part of the cycle of nature, but to us they are a pest!