Females lay eggs to start the cycle again. Despite hard scientific evidence, woolly bear folklore persists. People love being able to observe them at a glance and make an immediate prediction.

Starting in spring, woolly bears metamorphose into the moth stage, mate, lay eggs, and die off. (The moths don’t eat, and live only a few days at most.) Then, the cycle repeats itself.

Wasps and flies inject their own eggs into a caterpillar's body for growing larvae to feed off its internal organs. But the woolly bear caterpillar (Grammia incorrupta) is one of the only recorded ...