For someone who is a biologist, I know next to nothing about caterpillars. I do know that some turn into butterflies and others into moths. I know that some are elegant in appearance, and a few have stinging hairs, hollow tubes containing venom that can break off in your skin and be very painful. I also know that tent caterpillars build their silken nests in early spring in the forks of black cherry or apple trees and eat the leaves when they appear. Anyone living in the eastern United States has seen tent caterpillar nests.
Most people are probably determined to destroy any they find on trees in their yard.
When I saw three eastern tent caterpillar nests in my front yard, two in a cherry tree and one in my tiny apple tree, my initial reaction was that the nests and their builders must go. But the first is too much like a gladiator sport, and the second releases poison into the yard, so neither was very appealing. Instead, I remembered an article I'd read in ''American Scientist'' by James T. Costa about caterpillars being social insects. In contrast to some of the true social insects, such as bees, ants, and termites, caterpillars are all juveniles with no adult present. The eastern tent moth lays her eggs on the tree in early summer and soon dies.