Are these "tent" caterpillars?

[Locut0s]

While up at Squamish I noticed these on a small sapling in an abandoned lot in town. I've never seen so many caterpillars up close in a formation like this. However I've seen tent caterpillar formations from a distance in trees. Large web like formations, rather creepy looking actually.



Here is a closeup of a single one:

[hedgehog]

1. Does it match this?

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/comhort/nooksack/ipmweb/blue/tent_caterpillar.html

BTW - it took my kids' example for me to figure out that the best way to identify a critter is to do a Google image search for what I think it is as the first step.

[Locut0s]

2. Yup that be them. Cute individually. Kind of makes your skin crawl en mass.

[HarveyDarkey]

3. They look somewhat different here in the Midwest

[Chan790]

4. We call those gypsy-moth catapillars in the northeast.

They're an invasive species without natural predators here, capable of ecological devastation and fairly-vast deforestation of an area...we typically burn them. It's the first job of many a teenaged boy (or girl) in Western New England on the outskirts of state and federal forestry land where my parents live:

Go. Find these. Destroy them with extreme prejudice. If you find a lot of them, like a few thousand...mark the spot on your map and turn it in to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection to send someone out to spray them.

[A Simple Game]

6. There are two varieties, both are terrible for the environment.

Check out the link. http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2022.html

[applegrove]

5. Yup. We had those on my favourite

climbing tree in our backyard growing up. I hated them. You‘d be climbing the tree on fine day and your hand would squish them. They were suddenly everywhere.

[TrogL]

7. Yes. The ones we have around here are grey coloured but look the same