My senior thesis, Voyage of the Bagworm explores the daily activities of these curious creatures. Bagworms are fascinating caterpillars of the Bagworm Moth which live in portable protective casings constructed out of silk and plant debris.

My entire life, I have been an admirer of nature. I also have a passion for telling stories through animation and documentary photography. So for my thesis I wanted to take a closer look at the microcosmic world of bagworms.

What began as a pure stop motion documentary organically evolved into an amusing insight into their interactions with one another. I photographed the caterpillars nearly every day for three months and I started noticing similar behaviors among them. They would also engage in behavior that I could only describe as recreational amusement. Usually when one crawls near another, it inevitably attaches itself to the other’s bag and enjoys a free ride! They would also climb to the top of a plant and repel back to the ground, just to crawl right back up and repeat the process several times.

This film is intended to show a different perspective of these extraordinary critters. The homemade sounds are meant to show my interpretation of their character. Instead of looking at them as pests that need to be destroyed, I want the viewer to understand that they are unique miracles of nature.

A friend showed me this photo a few days ago and I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to one of my bagworm photos! The image is of a Toxic nudibranch which is an AMAZING sea creature! It was taken by David Doubilet for National Geographic. Here is the link to Doubilet’s entire gallery of Toxic nudibranch (that’s fun to say huh?)

The big caterpillar was one of the largest I have seen, but I have seen some much smaller than the one on the right. From what I understand, they immediately begin building their bags as teeny newly-hatched caterpillars.

Next step, catch them hatching like I did with the Pink Striped Oakworm Moth! The female lays her eggs and dies without ever leaving the bag, so this will be a tough one. I know they are hatching somewhere because I keep seeing these tiny leafy bags smaller than my pinky nail! Wish me luck!

So, my theory is that the two “rivaling” bagworms were hanging out, when said bird came up and pecked it from the safety of it’s bag. And the other one died of SHOCK!

I put these two bagworms on a bright green plant, because I feel I need more colors in my thesis video. I don’t want to take them out of their habitat, I just wanted to find different colors and textures to surround them. I had no idea if they would even come back out of their bags once I put them there. I watched them for about 10 min and they did nothing. So I moved to something else, leaving them there. A few minutes later, I looked back to see that the larger one was repelling down the middle of the leaf. Now I have been trying to catch them repelling from beginning to end, and haven’t been successful yet. As soon as I saw it repelling I grabbed my tripod, repositioned it towards my little acrobat and by the time I got settled it had crawled back up!

I had a hunch it was going to try again, so I placed my camera in a more aerial view. And guess what! It crawled to the very tip of the leaf, securely attached itself via silk and began repelling down. And when it got to the bottom, it crawled up another big section of the plant and did it again! They have to be doing this for fun right? It was like watching a Navy Seal demonstration!

I found these two pestering one another today. I think they were both trying to “silk” (not sure of the proper term here yet) on the same leaf. You can see in the second image, the bagworm finally putting his mark on it! I have close to 700 shots from this little escapade today. I can’t wait to put it into sequence!

I discovered that they do NOT like it when another worm anchors itself too close to them on branches. They start to “pop” their bags, really fast, up and down to discourage the other from staying. I witnessed a larger bag start “popping” really quick like this while I was shooting elsewhere on the tree…it got my attention, and I saw the smaller bagworm eventually “wake up” and crawl around it to find a new home. I didn’t capture the first part in camera, but I did catch the worm finding a new place to hang further out on the limb. It crawled right inside of my little frame of action, without leaving! I was quite pleased to see it come to the closest branch and build it’s anchor of silk, and then recede inside its bag! I could not have planned it. Lucky catch!

I also found a worm that was caught up in a web of silk on the ground, it would start to move and then I would see the sand start to move in lines, 3-4″ away. It was coming, almost all the way out of it’s bag to cut the lines off of itself! It was pretty cool! I caught it flipping around on the ground. After the shoot, I helped him out and let it go on it’s little untangled way!

All in all, good day of shooting in bagworm land

To get the shot I envisioned, I had to create my own version of a tripod, to be at “eye level” with it. So I found a little seashell in the dirt and sat the end of my macro lens on it. It worked really well! I love the quality of the magic hour lighting from today, but I’m afraid it appears misleadingly warm, when it was extreeeeemely cold!