Happy August! Can you believe summer is almost over?
So last week’s puzzler was a picture of a small part, asking for the identity of the animal. I was impressed that one of my blog subscriber’s–a guy named Joe–was correct in his answer, which was “it is the fake eye of Cyborg The Destroyer. He uses it to wink at and seduce Sirens.” Actually, now that I think of it, this is NOT correct.
But he gets points for trying.
I would love it if more people used the comment box below the blog posts to offer your guesses to these puzzlers. Without comments I have no way of knowing if these puzzlers are too hard, too easy, boring or interesting. I would LOVE to hear from you!! The comment box asks for your email only so that I don’t get 1000 robots checking out sites to spam.
Ok, so on to the answer. Let me show you this picture:
Do you know now?
This is a lovely Luna Moth. They are by far one of our most beautiful moths, and one of the largest at a wingspan of just over 4 inches! They have an incredible sense of smell, males able to detect the pheromones of females from several miles away (as my husband says, “Wow, that’s one smelly female!”)
You can tell a male from a female by the antenna. Male antennae are MUCH more feathery. Here is a picture of both the male and female. Can you pick out the male? (They were conveniently mating for me so I got to see them both. Plus it was pouring rain, so they weren’t going anywhere.)
The top one is the male, bottom is the female. Here is another picture–check out the feathery antennae!
Have you ever seen one of these moths? If you have then you know how lovely they can be. Know what those eyespots are for? To scare off predators –when they see these spots they may be shocked enough to abandon the chase. Look how beautiful the wings are when they are brand new. I found this one when I was on my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. What a thrill to find her in the morning as I was packing up, nestled in amid the leaves, just a few feet from where I put my tent.
If you want to attract moths to your yard, I wrote a blog post about this some time ago. Click HERE if you want to read it. Here is a quiz about moths if you are interested. Know how to tell a moth from a butterfly? Check back next week for a post about this.
And here, is the next puzzler!! Have a great weekend. Thanks for reading. I hope to hear from you soon.