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Thanks to Joel and an anonymous listener for their suggestions this week!
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\nFurther reading:
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\nDieback and recovery in poplar and attack by hornet clearwing moth
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\nThe enormous and beautiful Atlas moth:
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\nA male hairy tentacle moth without and with coremata extended [photos from this site]:
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\nThe hornet moth looks like a hornet but can't sting:
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\nShow transcript:
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\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.
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\nWelcome to September, where we\u2019re mere weeks away from Monster Month! Invertebrate August is over for another year, but what\u2019s this? An episode about moths?! Hurrah for one extra invertebrate episode, because they don\u2019t get enough attention on this podcast! Thanks to Joel and an anonymous listener for their suggestions.
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\nFirst, a listener who wants to remain anonymous suggested that we talk about moths in general, and the Atlas moth in particular. I like the Atlas moth because you can catch it in Animal Crossing. It\u2019s also beautiful and one of the largest moths in the entire world. Its wingspan can be well over 10 inches across, or about 27 cm, which is bigger than a lot of bird wingspans.
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\nThe Atlas moth\u2019s wings are mostly cinnamon brown with darker and lighter spots. The upper wings have a curved sort of hook at the top that\u2019s lighter in color and has an eyespot. It looks remarkably like a snake head, and in fact if a predator approaches, the moth will move its wings so that it looks like a snake is rearing its head back to strike.
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\nDespite having such huge wings, atlas moths don\u2019t fly very well. That\u2019s okay because they only need to be able to fly for a few days, which they mostly do at night. They\u2019re only looking for a mate, not food, because they don\u2019t even have fully formed mouthparts. They don\u2019t eat as adults. Like many moths, they mate, lay eggs, and die.
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\nA few weeks later, the eggs hatch and the baby caterpillars emerge. The caterpillar is pale green with little spikes all over, and it eats plants until it grows to around 4 and a half inches long, or about 11 and a half cm. At that point it spins a cocoon attached to a twig, hidden from potential predators by dead leaves that the caterpillar incorporates into the cocoon\u2019s outside.
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\nThe Atlas moth lives in forests in southern Asia, including China, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, with a subspecies native to Japan. Its cocoons are sometimes collected to use for silk. The silk isn\u2019t as high a quality as the domesticated silk moth\u2019s, but it\u2019s very strong and since the cocoons are so big, they produce lots of silk. Sometimes people will collect a cocoon after the moth has emerged and use it as a little purse.
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\nNext, Joel suggested two interesting moths. The first is often called the hairy tentacle moth, which sounds absolutely horrifying. Its scientific name is Creatonotos gangis, and it lives in parts of Australia and southeast Asia.
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\nThe hairy tentacle moth is also called the Australian horror moth and other names that inspire fear and disgust. But why? The moth is really pretty. Its wings are pale brown and white with dark gray stripes in the middle, and it has a black spot on its head. The abdomen is usually red with black spots in a row. The wingspan is about 40 mm.
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\nThe issue comes with the way the male attracts a female. Inside his abdomen the male has four coremata, which are glands that emit pheromones. Pheromones are chemicals that other moths can detect, much like smells. When a male is ready to advertise for a mate, he perches on the edge of a leaf or somewhere similar and inflates the coremata so that they unfurl from inside the ab...