Codling moth
The codling moth is a small grey brown moth. Its caterpillar is the little worm you might find when you bite into an apple. The moth folds its wings like a tent when it rests.
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Fun facts
Its front wings have brown spots with golden rims, called little mirrors.
A baby caterpillar must find a fruit within one day of hatching, so it hurries along for up to 3 metres.
The caterpillar crawls towards the light, because fruits grow at the sunny ends of branches.
When it is freezing cold, the caterpillar goes completely still, as if it were dead. When it warms up again, it wakes up.
The colour of the grown-up moth can depend on how ripe the fruit was that it ate as a caterpillar.
Most asked questions about Codling moth
?Is it safe to eat an apple with a worm in it?
The worm is usually a codling moth caterpillar and is not poisonous. Just cut away the part it ate, or ask a grown-up.
?How does the worm get into the apple?
A tiny caterpillar hatches from an egg near the fruit and chews its way in through the skin.
?How big is a codling moth?
It is about 1 centimetre long, with wings about 2 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cydia pomonella
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Tortricidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Tortricidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Codlin moth, Apple worm
Where the facts come from
- Codling moth (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Simon Winkley & Ken Walker, Museum Victoria. CC BY 3.0 au, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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