Moths

Alex Re (00:00): Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you, you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. The animal that I'm going to be talking about today is probably something you've seen around or outside of your house. You'll usually find these creatures at night, especially if you're near a light source, so make sure you bring a lantern because we're heading into the dark to talk about moths.

(00:53): Moths are in the order lepidoptera, which also means scaly winged. This is the same order as their close relatives butterflies, but although butterflies and moths look similar, there are many differences between them. For starters, moths are a much more diverse group of animals and there are around 160,000 known species of them. There are only around 17,000 species of butterfly. The major difference between moths and butterflies is the shape of their antenna. Moths usually have a more feathery appearance to their antennae than butterflies. These feathery antennae are used to sense chemical signals from their environment, usually either to find food or a mate. These antenna have specialized cells that pinpoint these chemical signals called chemoreceptors. Moths are also much stouter than butterflies and not as fragile, and there are a few key characteristics that separate moths and butterflies from other types of insects. They're unique in the fact that they have scales on their wings.

(02:00): If you've ever touched a moth or butterfly's wings and it felt powdery, that powder is actually tiny scales. The scales help to create the coloration and patterns on their wings, and they're also thought to help them not get stuck in spiderwebs. Moths and butterflies are also capable of retracting their feeding tubes, which are called proses. This is something that other insects can't do. As a general rule of thumb, moths are relatively dull when it comes to color patterns, but obviously there are exceptions to this rule just based on the huge number of species. Moths are also usually nocturnal, but again, this isn't true for all species like the giant silkworm moth, sunset moth and tomato horn, worm moth moth size varies a lot depending on the species. With some species being as small as almost a 10th of an inch and some being as large as a foot in length.

(02:58): The three largest species of moth in the world are the Atlas moth white witch and Hercules moth. The Hercules moth has been recorded at a wingspan of 36 centimeters. That's over a foot wide, and moths have adapted to live in pretty much any habitat they're found on every continent in the world. Except for Antarctica. Moss have no real average lifespan as different species have very different life expectancies. Some adult moss can only be expected to live a few days while others can live for almost a year. However, it can be expected on average that females live longer than males. Now what do moths eat? We'll find that out right after the break. The science word that I want to tell you about today is detri devore. Atri devore is basically a fancy way of saying a decomposer Tri DeVores break down dead organisms and help put nutrients back into the environment.

(04:18): Okay, we're back. The order lepidoptera, which is moths and butterflies, is known as the order that has the most percentage of their members being vegetarian. Out of all the major insect orders, the vast majority of larval stage moths are vegetarian, and because of this, they're known to be absolute menas to gardeners. Two examples of species who cause a considerable amount of damage are the bull worm and the measuring worm. Bull worms specifically eat cotton corn and tomatoes and measuring worms eat trees and leaves. Moths are also notorious for eating wool, fur, silk, and feathers, which is another reason why they're considered pests. This eating behavior first developed in the wild from moths feeding on material that was shed by animals like horns, antlers, fur, wool, and feathers. But adult moths don't do this. Only the larva and some people will put moth balls in their clothing to help deter moths from eating it.

(05:21): As I previously stated, the majority of moth larva are vegetarian. However, there are some species that are predatory and parasitic. Two species that are carnivorous by nature are the plant hopper parasite moth and the luper moth plant. Hopper larva demonstrate parasitic behaviors where they'll attach themselves to a victim insect and slowly feed on their bodily fluids. And in Hawaii, almost every species of luper moth larva on the islands are carnivorous. They're ambush predators and it's believed that these moth larva became carnivorous to take up the ecological niche or role of praying mantis. Most adult moths feed on liquid-based food from plants. They'll visit flowers and use their proboscis to drink the liquid nectar found in those flowers. They'll also feed on rotting fruit, sap and live fruit. Moths that feed on live fruit have an extra strong proboscis to penetrate the outer layer of the fruit.

(06:24): There are even a few species of moths whose adult forms are carnivorous. They're known as vampire moths. Moths and butterflies have an innate need for extra sodium, and most species fulfill this desire by drinking from puddles, a practice known as puddled. Certain species of moths have strayed away from pu idling and instead will get their sodium by drinking directly from tears and puss of mammals. There have been reports of these moths feeding on the eyeballs of people too. Some species of moths have taken it to even more of an extreme and will feed on the blood of mammals like mosquitoes. These moths evolved from the moths that feed on live fruit and instead use their specialized strong SCUs to penetrate the skin of animals. Some moths like the Luna moth don't even have mouths at all and therefore can't eat. These moths grow into adults with the sole purpose of reproduction and due to their lack of a mouth, they'll die in less than a week when they've reproduced.

(07:31): Moths have four stages of their lifecycle, which is the egg, larva, pupa, and then the adult stages. A malts entire lifecycle includes the time that they hatch all the way up until the time that they die. However, this can get tricky because some species will remain dormant for years In the pupa stage, moths have different breeding seasons depending on where they live, mainly due to the weather conditions of the area. The name of a larval stage moth is a caterpillar just like a butterfly. Oftentimes, it's easier to tell a species of moth based on the coloration and features of their larval stage rather than their adult stage. Also like butterflies, larva will enter a pupil or cocoon stage when they've eaten and grown enough moth. Pupa can be found in a bunch of different places. They can be suspended under branches, but they can also be laying amid the leaves and branches of the forest floor.

(08:28): Some species even burrow underground to enter their pupa stage. Some species can stay in the cocoon stage for years. For example, arctic species can be in the pupa stage for two years due to the short growing season, and some desert species can remain dormant for up to seven years until there's adequate rainfall to support enough food. The rainfall actually triggers the moth to emerge. Silk moths spin their cocoons using silk that they make, and this is what silk clothing is made out of. It takes an insane amount of cocoons to make a single article of clothing to be more exact. It takes 5,500 silk worms to produce a single kilogram of silk. When a group of moths emerge from their pupil stage, it's called a flight. Oftentimes, at least in the case of moths that live in cooler climates, there are two flights per year.

(09:26): The eggs laid in May and June, which becomes the summer flight, develop much more rapidly than the eggs of the spring flight because of the warmer temperatures. These two flights, although they're the same species, would have drastically different lifespans because one clutch of eggs would hatch for a whole 10 months and the others would hatch become adults and die in just four months. Other species that live in much warmer climates can have many flights per year because they can breed and lay eggs at any time with no interruptions from the climate. Okay, we're going to take our last break and when we get back we'll talk about some moth behaviors. Time for today's trivia question, how many insects are living on earth right now? Whatever answer you were thinking probably isn't big enough. The answer is 10 quintillion, which is 10 with 18 zeroes.

(10:52): Okay, welcome back. It's a well-known fact by anyone who's sat on their porch at night that moths are attracted to lights. This is an interesting behavior because it's confusing that a nocturnal animal would be attracted to a light source, and we don't really have a solid explanation for it, but scientists have two main hypotheses about this, which are both centered around the moon. The first hypothesis has to do with the idea that malts use the moon as a point of navigation when they're flying long distances. It's thought that moths use the moon to navigate their up and down orientation, and this has something to do with the brightness of the sky compared to the ground, so this light could confuse the moths into thinking it's the moon. This idea is supported by the fact that moths respond much more to white light than yellow light.

(11:46): The second hypothesis is that moss have a light oriented escape method. Scientists believe that moths may fly towards the light of the moon in order to get away from predators. Moths also tend to stay at the light that they come in contact with, and this is because just like human eyes, moth eyes can adjust to the amount or absence of light in an area to see better, but unlike humans, moth eyes take an extremely long time to adjust to darkness because of the long amount of time it takes for a moth to adjust to darkness, it could be difficult for them to leave the light they're flying around because they're blind in the dark for so long. Moths in all of their stages of life are very important to the ecosystems that they're a member of either by being food for animals or helping the pollination of plants.

(12:38): Moths are major food items for songbirds, small mammals, bats, and other insects. Birds and bats will eat moths at any stage of their lifecycle from egg to adult, even animals that wouldn't normally be seen as moth predators like lizards, small rodents, skunks, and even sometimes bears will eat moths, hornets and ants will pray specifically on moth. Caterpillars and spiders and beetles will find moth cocoons and eat them when they can't fight back. Some species of wasps sting and paralyze caterpillars and bring them to their layers for their young to slowly feed on. Songbirds in particular rely heavily on moth caterpillars when they're reproducing. Even birds that only eat seeds and berries as adults will raise their young on caterpillars because they're much denser in nutrients and help their offspring grow because they experience so much predation. Many moths have developed a bunch of adaptations to avoid these predators.

(13:41): They're masters of camouflage, mimicry, and sometimes aggressive defense mechanisms. Some moths mimic the coloration of other animals that are known to be toxic so that predators will also see them as toxic. There's even one species of caterpillar that if attacked will vomit liquid on itself, giving it a foul taste to discourage predators. Moths are also one of, if not the most prolific plant pollinators in their ecosystems. Moths continue the job that pollinators like hummingbirds bees and butterflies have during the day, but they do it far into the night making pollination a 24 hour a day process. There's even been a study showing that nocturnal moths will visit more plant species than bees, which breaks the normal idea that bees are the most important pollinator. Since there are so many different species of moths. There are some that are generalists and will visit many flowers, and there are also some that are much more specific in what flowers they pick.

(14:44): Unfortunately, many species are declining in population in the United Kingdom. Moth populations declined almost 30% since the sixties. This is mainly because of habitat loss and pesticide use. Luckily, there are some organizations that help moths that you should check out like the butterflies and moths of North America, the Le Adopts Society and the Society. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of moths. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at onwildlife.org. You can also email us with any questions at On Wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, and you could follow us on Instagram at On Wildlife or on TikTok at wildlife. Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday for another awesome episode, and that's on Wildlife

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