Something similar happened to me with a weird crustacean I posted and I was dancing on the wind for weeks

OP can we see said caterpillar?

Imagine seeing an insect - it happens all the time, not a rare or wondrous occasion by any general sense, yet... Between 15,000 and 18,000 new species are identified each year, half of those discoveries being insects.

That spider in your home, could be unidentified, new. The flies on your windshields, fresh creations.

Years ago I found a huge grub in a friends garden. Took it home in a jar speared with a fork for breathing holes. Put it in a bowl of dirt - Moth larvae will bury underground to metamorphosize - I carefully dug into the dirt when the leaves were falling. A beautiful umber leathery cocoon sat, quietly greeting me. All winter I kept it inside, warm. Carefully moved from one room to another. Come spring, I thought they would not come out. Come summer, I was left with a casing I thought empty. One night, one breathtaking night, a moth larger than my partner's hand, or mine appeared. The Pandora Sphinx Moth was free, and she spread her wings and took to the night sky. I never knew a moth like her could exist in Colorado.

At any given moment, it's estimated there are 10 quintillion individual insects alive. Be curious! Who knows what we will discover next. There in your backyard, local park, leaflitter in the city, some new, wonderous thing lives.

heres the first ever picture of an as-of yet undescribed leaf miner moth! featuring my dog! i just took him out for his walk one day and saw something on a leaf, i didnt even know it was evidence of a bug, i thought it might be a fungus or something. i posted it to inaturalist and after identifying the host tree, a leafminer expert informed me that that tree was not a known host of anything this might be, and it was almost certainly an undescribed species of moth.

i eventually collected some more leaves that still had larvae/pupae living inside to mail to him so he could raise them to adulthood and work on classifying them

look at that!! a whole new moth!!

theres just so many bugs in the world!! you just never know!!