Pink-spotted hawk-moth
The pink-spotted hawk-moth is a big, strong moth with a grey brown body striped with pink bands. Its back wings are grey with black bands and pink near the body. It flies at night and drinks from deep, trumpet-shaped flowers.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillar is big and fat with a horn on its tail, and it is called the sweetpotato hornworm.
The caterpillar eats day and night, and farmers who grow sweet potatoes are not happy about it.
It is a great traveller: grown-ups fly all the way north to Canada and south to the Falkland Islands.
Its body gets thinner towards the end, ending in a point.
Most asked questions about Pink-spotted hawk-moth
?Is the pink-spotted hawk-moth dangerous?
No. It cannot bite or sting, and the caterpillar's horn is harmless.
?What does the pink-spotted hawk-moth eat?
It drinks nectar from deep flowers at night. Its caterpillar eats sweet potato leaves.
?How big is a pink-spotted hawk-moth?
Its wings are about 9,5 to 12 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Agrius cingulata
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1775
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Sphingidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Sphingidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America, Australia and Oceania, Africa, Europe
- Also known as
- Sweetpotato hornworm
Where the facts come from
- Agrius cingulata (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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