The Lappet (Gastropacha quercifolia) has an irregular wing shape, allowing them to disguise more easily as leafs in the nature.
Personally, one of the interesting things about this moth is the variance of its names across different languages, as English just doesn’t have one, instead defaulting on the name that it uses for the entire family.
Some languages take on the resemblance to an oak leaf, such as Dutch (Eikenblad, or oak leaf), French (La feuille morte du chêne, or dead oak leaf) or Russian (Коконопряд дуболистный, or oak leaf cocoon-spinner).
Others use the colouring, like German (Kupferglucke, or copper eggar), Danish (Has a variety of names, such as Kobberbrun takspinder, or copper-brown spike-spinner), or Swedish (Rostfärgad bladspinnare, meaning rust-coloured leaf-spinner).
Finnish calls them Pihlajanorsu, meaning rowan elephant, where rowan is the name of one of the bushes the larvae feed on. ‘Elephant’ likely refers to the elongated, snout-like, mouth parts.
Though, not a speaker of most of these languages, so the translation may be incorrect since it was primarily a dictionary look-up of the terms, particularly doubting the Danish one. Many of these use the word 'spinner’ within of them, which is the name of the moth family in these languages, since the caterpillars tend to live in nests spun out of silk.
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Brazilian horned devil (Citheronia laocoon) is another very nice moth fellow.
Some of the more well-known moths in the English-speaking internet include the Regal moth (Citheronia regalis) and the Imperial moth (Eacles imperialis), and this fellow appears like a mixture of both, although being much more related to the former one as the taxonomic name suggests.
It’s nice to occasionally take a well-known moth species and just look at other species within the same genus, sometimes there can be real beautiful fellows among them.
Nematopogon swammerdamella, a moth that has a taxonomic name almost as long as the antennae.
That is just one of the species in the Adelidae family, which has the common name of “Fairy longhorn moths,” named after the appropriately-sized antennae. Unfortunately, only the male moths of the family have them as large as they are here.
Spanish moth (Xanthopastis regnatrix). This fellow isn’t actually Spanish, despite the name. Instead, they inhabit the eastern coast of the United States of America, from the entire northern coast of Gulf of Mexico to the region of New York.
Some other moths in the same genus are spread through the rest of America, south to Argentina, and they too have been called “Spanish moth”. The decorated pink wings with a complex pattern on this species are very interesting and pretty.
Skullcap skeletoniser moth (Prochoreutis inflatella). A completely metal-looking name, and the moths themselves are incredible as well.
The ‘skullcap’ part comes from one of the plants that they commonly feed for: Scutellaria lateriflora, which has a variety of common names that involve skullcaps (such as Blue skullcap or American skullcap).
'Skeletoniser’ is a biological term that means a moth whose larvae eat the cell tissue of the plant, leaving the skeleton behind. For example, eating the green parts of the leaf, leaving the white parts connecting it to the stem intact.
Kentish glory (Endromis versicolora) is another moth species with very decorated and beautiful wings.
Despite the common name, they’re relatively rare in the actual region of Kent, instead being far more widespread in Scotland. Outside of Great Britain, they’re relatively widespread in the centre of Europe: from the Pyrenees and Italy to Fennoscandia and the Urals.
Mad hatterpillar (Uraba lugens) is a moth with a fairly interesting caterpillar, consisting of its own skulls. Everytime the caterpillar sheds its exoskeleton, the skull remains attached to the head, which is fairly metal.
Have seen this be referred to as the ‘Big hat boy’ in a relatively serious source, though this name doesn’t appear to exist there anymore, being declared an invalid common name. Nonetheless, this seems like a fairly fitting name for the caterpillar.
And, similarly to many other unusual animals such as Creatonotos Gangis, this one comes from Australia. While this may be stemming from confirmation bias, it’s a somewhat humorous stereotype of Australian animals being unusual.
Alypiodes flavilinguis is a very recent species of moth. While first described under that name in 1863, the name was later considered to be a synonym (i.e. the same species as) of another species within the Alypiodes genus.
They were separated into a separate species on the 8th of July 2021, with the publication of the article arguing such in a prestigious Lepidopterology journal, based on DNA barcodes, larval characters, and adult markings of the species.
In more simple terms, “new moth just dropped”.
The Gothic moth (Naenia typica) played a small role in early zoological taxonomy.
The primary start point of modern taxonomy is taken to be 1758, with the publishing of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus. This book is the first attempt at categorising animals into a consistent, binomial (i.e. with two parts: genus and species) naming scheme, with kingdoms split into classes, then orders, genera, and finally species.
This system has been expanded upon over the years, but stayed similar in structure with the primary change being a shift from a rank-based one off the internal and external organ structure to a cladistic one based on the last common evolutionary ancestor.
In particular, one of the animal orders created in that book still used today is Lepidoptera, which were categorised as insects with 4 wings covered in flat scales (hence the name, meaning “scaly wings”). Lepidoptera were split into 3 genera: Papilio including all butterflies, Sphinx including all hawk moths, and Phalaena – which included the other moth species. The bugs were distributed across genera according to their similarity to the type species of the genus.
The species picked for the Phalaene genus was Phalaene typica, the Gothic moth, making this arguably the most moth-y moth to exist.
The Phalaene genus eventually got split into multiple genera, and it only exists as a remnant of the early days of taxonomy nowadays. Currently, the moth is in the Naenia genus, hence the name of Naenia typica.
Regardless, this is the most moth of all time.