Mantis Pixie
Moth Friends
Moths Part Three
This time I’m going to post about two separate species! Actias Luna (Luna moth) and Actias Dubernardi (Chinese Moon Moth.)
These two moths are part of the same family so they have a lot of things in common. Both are silk moths and have beautiful tails on their lower set of wings. The Actias family is very big and there are moths all over the world that belong to it. Most Actias moths create a cocoon out of a mixture of silk and leaves at the base of a tree just before the cold months. Sometimes you can find them when you’re raking leaves!
Actias Luna
Actias Dubernardi Female
Actias Dubernardi Male
More Moths!
The continuing saga of moths! This post is dedicated to my favorite species, Hyalophora Cecropia. They are giant silk moths that are native to much of the United States. 🙂 Their caterpillars are picky about what they eat, but once they get nice and fat they spin a cocoon out of silk and go dormant for the cold months. When they emerge from the cocoon they are big beautiful moths with fat fluffy bums. Silk moths only live a little over a week as they don’t have working mouths, but they’re too busy finding mates to worry about that. By the end of their time as a moth their wings are very beat up and usually their life ends by being eaten by a bird or some other forest critter.
Moths
Taking a little break from the art for a moment. 🙂 I’ve been raising silk moths and other types of moths and thought I would share some pictures of that! These insects are all ones I either raised from caterpillar or cocoon. I’m going to start off with the very first moths I raised, which were hawk moths.
This particular species is Manduca Sexta. The caterpillars eat primarily tomato or tobacco for most of their lives to get nice and fat, then bury themselves in the dirt to pupate. The adult moths live about two weeks and fly very much like hummingbirds. They even have a long tongue to sip nectar from plants! Manduca sexta is a great species for beginners to start with since the caterpillars are sold at a lot of pets stores as lizard food.
 