Vapourer moth
The vapourer moth is a funny moth because the boys and girls look completely different. The boy is orange brown with a white spot on each front wing and flies around in a zigzag. The girl has only tiny stumps for wings, so she cannot fly at all.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillar looks spectacular, with four tufts on its back like little toothbrushes and long hair tufts at both ends.
The girl moth spends her whole short grown-up life sitting on her empty cocoon.
She lays hundreds of eggs right on top of her old cocoon, and the eggs wait there all winter.
The boy moth finds the girl by following her special smell through the air.
Most asked questions about Vapourer moth
?Can the vapourer moth fly?
The boy moth can fly, but the girl has only tiny wing stumps and cannot fly.
?What does the vapourer caterpillar eat?
The leaves of many trees and bushes, such as birch, oak, willow and hawthorn.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Orgyia antiqua
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Erebidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Erebidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Rusty tussock moth
Where the facts come from
- Orgyia antiqua (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 Ben Sale from UK. CC BY 2.0, 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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