Nocturnal Moth is no Day Butterfly

Just as we can see butterflies flying in the morning hours, we can also see them flying at night, but there is a detail, the Lepidoptera family includes butterflies and also moths. Although they all look the same, they are not.

 Butterflies fly during the day while moths fly at night, this is one of the differences. On the other hand, butterflies have different characteristics from moths, we can notice another difference in their wings. While the wings of butterflies are large and erect, the wings of moths are drooping backwards. Do you want to know another difference?

Butterflies raise their wings as they take flight, while moths seem to fly like an airplane. In the antennae we notice another detail, the tip of the antenna of a butterfly is shaped like a match head, moths have them smooth and in the case of males the antennae are shaped like a comb or bird feather.

 Do butterflies and moths belong to the same family? Yes, they do. Are butterflies much more numerous than moths? No, according to the information I have been kept informed, moths have a greater number of species than butterflies, am I telling the truth? I was as surprised as many of you. I swore that butterflies have a larger population on the planet.

I have had a passion for butterflies for a long time, you will see in my publications how many of them I have been able to photograph. This nocturnal moth I found very close to the house. Moths insist on looking for places where there is light, that is to say, they are attracted to them. Certainly there are scientific explanations that give an answer to this phenomenon, I am not the right one to give details since I am simply a fan of these insects.

I have been curious and I have been able to notice in some moments the quantity of moths gathered in the same bulb, it usually happens when it is winter time, in this sense I could affirm that they use the light to warm their bodies. I have also seen that where there is a group of nocturnal moths gathered on a lighted bulb, when it is turned off, they fall one after another, only some manage to resume their flight and flee the place. This same phenomenon occurs with rain ants. Could it be a coincidence? It is possible, I am just reporting my experience.

 Beware of nocturnal moths! Did you know that moths can feed on wool or cotton? I know about the monarch butterfly caterpillar, it feeds on the milkweed leaf but I didn't know about moths. The thing is that the cotton with which they design the clothes is a tempting food of the moth friend, in other words, they can damage the garments that we have in our closets for this reason we must pay attention to them.

 To close this new publication I will tell you that this moth is male, you can identify its sex by the shape of the antennae in the form of comb. It seems that male species also have their charms. 

 Thanks for reading and commenting. All photos are my property @belkis758