Luna Moth
by Cricket Hackmann
Title
Luna Moth
Artist
Cricket Hackmann
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
There is a "dusk to dawn" light over our garage doors, and it attracts a variety of flying insects at night, including these luna moths (Actius Luna). Found mostly in the eastern half of North America, Luna moths are about 5" across, but often appear even larger, due to the long tails on their hindwings. You can just faintly see the second set of "eyespots" on it's lower wings (through the upper wings). It's suggested that these eyespots may help the luna moths ward off potential predators.
While preparing this narrative, I read that the large feathery antennae are larger on the male moth, and help him pick up trace amount of pheromones -- chemicals that the females release that allow him to find her even in complete darkness.
The morning this photo was taken we found five of these moths on the north side of our house. Most of them looked a little worse for the wear -- like maybe they had been fighting or had almost fallen prey to some type of predator. This one looked pretty much intact -- so he (?) got his portrait taken.
Uploaded
November 3rd, 2011
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